Madam, - I beg to differ with the conclusions of your Editorial, "Floating Eircom" (January 23rd). The real lesson of the Eircom saga is the naïvety of the Government's unwavering faith in the free market. Surely it cannot have been beyond the Government's capabilities to have incentivised the right individuals to manage the State's assets for the benefit of the nation.
In a Financial Times article, John Kay, a leading economist and a columnist with that paper, used the destruction of the Indonesian forests and the West Atlantic fisheries to illustrate the fallacy of blind faith in market-based solutions to the allocation of resources: "The thesis that all government need do is create the institutions of private property and markets will take care of the rest is one of the most pernicious doctrines of our times". But why should the Government listen to someone like John Kay when it can listen to the glossy pitches of the investment banks? - Yours, etc.,
JOE ROONEY, Vesey Place, Dun Laoghaire.