Sir, - Recently I was aboard the 122 bus from Cabra, having collected my £70.50 unemployment benefit from the post office. As I slowly pondered Mary Harney's plans for people like me, I couldn't help overhearing the conversation of two elderly pensioners: "There's an awful lot of blacks around here now." "Sure it was Mary Robinson that brought them and the gays into Ireland." I was struck by how our individual perspectives serve to create our sometimes not completely accurate sense of reality. I went off to pay my rent of £52.00, leaving me with £18.50 and a profound questioning as to what kind of inaccurate perspective could possibly create the reality of a "dependency culture" living happily on £2.60 a day? Reality test time, folks. -Yours, etc., Paul D'Alton,
Connaught Street,
Dublin 7.