TOM RYAN,
Sir, - In his article in your edition of October 4th, Dan McLaughlin conveys the impression that the EU criticised Charlie McCreevy in the year 2000 because his budget was not sufficiently in surplus. Dr McLaughlin implies that the criticism was farcical because Mr McCreevy was planning a budget surplus of €4 billion.
My recollection is that the criticism was not about budget balances but a warning that the budget was inflationary. Time has shown that the EU people were correct and Mr McCreevy was wrong to ignore them.
We survived the inflationary pressure for a while by importing EU goods at EU prices. The EU carried us on their back for that period. Finally, domestic inflation, the things we could not import, caught up with us. - Yours, etc.,
TOM RYAN, Dunmore road, Waterford.