Madam, – I’m afraid the usually incisive and erudite Joseph O’Connor is somewhat off the mark in his Opinion piece, (“Building blocks in wreckage”, Opinion, December 27th).
There is only one way to get us out of this economic and financial mess. We have to produce goods and services which are better and cheaper than our international competitors. True our leaders have made our task immeasurably more difficult than it need be – witness our overblown and mostly useless public service, our conversion of our bank debt to sovereign debt, our breaking of our banks by ridiculous meddling with how they run their affairs (ie forcing them to crystallise 10 years of bad property loan write-offs in one year through Nama), and the concomitant fruitless attempt to put a floor under property prices so as to save their developer friends. But Mr O’Connor is not an economist and I would forgive him missing those obvious mistakes by our leadership and there are many more equally glaring mistakes.
Where I would expect more from him is where he takes issue with Breda O’Brien’s assertion that “it would be a shame if religion was excluded from the national conversation”. Like all unbelievers Mr O’Connor asserts that “religious belief is surely at heart an intensely private matter”.
No it isn’t. No person should be ashamed to proudly proclaim his/her religious beliefs, and all people should be free to do so. In particular those of us who call ourselves Christian – and I believe we are still in the majority here – would do well to remember Jesus Christ’s admonition “he who is not with me is against me”. – Yours, etc,