Madam, - Much as I respect Dr Garret FitzGerald I have to take issue with part of his article in last Saturday's Irish Times.
He writes that the paucity of social spending means that several blackspots of unemployment and disadvantage continue to exist in Dublin and elsewhere. He also states that people who have done well in the Celtic Tiger years seem to care less for those less well-off than was the case in the lean 1980s.
I for one am growing increasingly tired of the black hole of "disadvantage" soaking up vast amounts of taxpayers' money to little positive effect. We are now living in a full-employment economy, which needs 50,000 migrants annually to do the work required. Tens of thousands of Chinese and Poles - to name but two groups - have come to this country to find work and have done so. How then, can so many of these "blackspots" continue to exist and grow? It can hardly be lack of work.
As for us being more selfish, well those of us who do choose to work find themselves paying through the nose for everything, and often spending several hours per day sitting in traffic. Thus, we find the likes of Fr Healy calling for us to pay more tax to help the welfare classes just a tad grating. Joe Taxpayer is already paying a huge amount for clerical sexual abuse, with zero consultation on this grave matter.
If a resentful rump of the populace wants to use the "unfairness" of modern society as a reason to vote for a bunch of neo-fascist ultra-nationalist thugs, then that is their choice.
But it really would be a step towards a more democratic and inclusive society if those of us in the middle who pay for everything were given some sort of real say in how our tax-euros are spent. - Yours, etc.,
GERARD KELLY, Orwell Gardens, Rathgar, Dublin 6.