Sir, - I am a housewife in Kerry with four small children. I have no hidden agendas or political axe to grind. I am not a professor of anything, nor am I an expert on what should be done with the Abbey Theatre. My main ambition is to bring up my four children to be good adults in a just society.
I have noticed that our politicians like to write to each other via the Letters page of The Irish Times (An Post seems to be out of favour with them) so perhaps they pay some attention to what is written about/to them here.
I want to register my absolute horror and disgust at what went on in our private nursing homes over the last number of years. I nursed in a private nursing home during the early 1980s, and the one thing elderly residents are afraid of is losing their beds. They have already been displaced once from their homes and they are very vulnerable people.
All our political parties were involved in preying on this fear. They allowed our health boards to intimidate and frighten our elderly and swindled them out of their life savings and pensions. Nobody was interested or man enough to shout: "Stop, this is wrong."
What is almost even more frightening though, is that our politicians are going to get away with it. They seem to have found a very efficient way of dealing with scandals, an ombudsman's report is far cheaper and less cumbersome than a tribunal; there are no awkward media reports on the tribunals findings each day and when the report finally comes out, the scandal is all over in a couple of days.
Our politicians don't seem to want to address what has happened. There is no moral high ground or political points to be scored as there is blood on all their hands. But are we being governed by decent men or political animals?
If we the public are unable to communicate our horror and disgust at this abuse of our elderly citizens' human rights, the door is surely left open for further abuses of our rights in the future.
I always knew that Leinster House was full of political animals, but could somebody please tell me how did we let it turn into Animal Farm? - Yours, etc.,
Kate O'Connor, Dingle, Co Kerry.