Sir, – We have been informed that the economic growth in Ireland is nearly 8 per cent and that inflation is zero.
Is this real or just political propaganda?
If the claimed growth rate is real, who is benefiting from it? For some time the socio-economic scenario in Ireland has been comparable with a barren space of black matter with a whirling galaxy on one side where richness concentrates.
If growth is measured on this oasis in a desert – where companies are registering unprecedented level of exports – it is not nationwide growth. Once again the fat cows are getting fatter, and the remainder of the herd have not enough to make ends meet.
Then let us consider zero inflation. What do they put in the calculation basket?
If you measure inflation on the basis that some consumer prices have stayed the same as before, then there is no inflation.
But if you calculate inflation on every single item of living costs, inflation will be far from zero.
What about the soaring level of rents, and the ever-increasing cost of services, from medical charges to health insurance, from motor taxes to motor insurance, from cigarettes to the cost of public transport.
To say inflation is zero is sheer lunacy.
– Yours, etc,
CONCETTO LA MALFA
Donnybrook,
Dublin 4.