Madam, - Pádraig Ó Cléirigh (December 28th) highlights an injustice to those now elderly women who, by virtue of forfeiting their careers to devote their "best years" to home-making, are deprived of the independence and dignity of having a pension of their own.
He directs our attention to Article 41 of Bunreacht na hÉireann which states that:
1. By her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.
2. The State shall endeavour to ensure that all mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.
This would seem to imply that it is only right and proper that those women, who were the unpaid carers of the nation in our less affluent days, should now be entitled to a State pension. - Yours, etc.,
MARGARET LEAHY, Ramor Park, Dublin 15.