Letters To The Editor 2005-02-26

Young asylum seekers

Ten glasses of tears

I have wandered aimlessly in search of love, joy, home and peace but it is nowhere to be found.

We all came here for different purposes, some of us because of the crises in our own country. If only I could change the time of life I would have loved to see my parents again. But unfortunately they can't be found on this planet earth. What have we done to receive this endless frustrating life?

We think of the long trip home: should we have stayed at home and thought of ending our lives like our parents did? Where should we be today? You have locked our joy, and hope of living, in a bottle.

What kind of world is this, where we are being treated as foreigners in another man's land?

Is it lack of imagination that makes us end up here? Why have you decided to lock us up in a cage?

What do you gain in subtracting our useful age out of our lives? When we mature you send us out of your cage like a wandering bird.

Why would it take it so long for you to decide our future, because it has been said to be in your hands? Why would a problem of one person be shared with us? That they would decide to stop my €19.10 (weekly welfare allowance)?

You could take ten glasses of the tears that run out of our eyes every night and you would still be thirsty. Don't worry, we still have more glasses for you to be satisfied.

Please forgive the sins of our parents and grant us mercy or pray to God to burn us, pull our clothes naked in the rain, for the surgery is not over but the pain is too much for me to hold and I believe that our soul shall fly to the Lord Almighty, the creator of heaven and earth, where we shall find peace and love.

From a fifth year student in a Dublin city centre school, who is an unaccompanied minor seeking asylum in Ireland. Asylum seekers under 18 are placed in the care of the Health Board, which accomodates them in private, catered hostel accomodation, and receive a welfare allowance of €19.10 per week plus full board.

Disability Bill

Rights-based legislation: a win-win situation

Congratulations on Marie Mulholland's article "Disability bill an insult" (12 February).

Initially I would like to state that while 700 people attended the recent conference in the RDS, organised by People with Disabilities Ireland, many could not participate. Lack of accessible public transport, scarcity of adequate accommodation and insufficient personal finances prohibited many from attending, inequalities that only the disabled community encounter.

When Brian Cowen, as Minister for Finance, opened his budget speech by saying, "people with disabilities do not have a voice", he was to be congratulated. When the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, stated, "there is no such legislation anywhere in the world" pertaining to the disability bill, one had to cringe at his research. When the former Minister of Transport Seamus Brennan informed Ursula Halligan during an interview on The Political Party on TV3 that public transport will be privatised, we saw the ink on the disability bill evaporate, leaving blank pages and broken promises.

The United Kingdom's rights-based disability legislation was developed following the the United Nations General Assembly's decision, in November 2001, to establish a committee to consider proposals for a comprehensive and integral convention to promote and protect the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities. Ireland was represented in this.

The UK decided to adopt, if not embrace, disability legislation and it was phased in, concluding in October 2004.

Since then, the disability employment agencies funded by the British government are having funding withdrawn as 70 per cent of people with disabilities have since located employment: new tax payers, new consumers.

Latest figures on "tourists with disabilities" for January 2005 show an increase of 60 per cent in this sector, bringing in much needed extra revenue and employment.

Rights-based disability legislation is a win-win situation for everyone, except the Irish. We shall see disabled tourists flocking to the UK because they have "access all areas". However, if those tourists wish to come to Ireland, they cannot, because we do not have the facilities. The Irish Government has yet again missed a golden opportunity for job creation, employment growth, and increased revenue for the State, and this is a Government that supposedly "knows the cost of everything".

Gillian Rowe

Tralee

Co kerry

Hill of Tara

Roche must act to save Tara

The legendary king, Lugaid mac Con, on pronouncement of an ill-informed judgement, brought about the collapse of the royal court of Tara. Its remains are said to be the extraordinary earthworks on the western flanks of the Hill of Tara, known as the Clóenfheartha (sloping trenches).

The Minister for the Environment, Dick Roche, will shortly make his pronouncement on whether or not to grant licences for the archaeological excavation of the Tara-Skryne valley in advance of construction of the M3 tolled motorway. His decision will be made in the knowledge that expert environmental, historical, and archaeological opinion is united in its assertion that this relatively short stretch of the motorway, comprising a major floodlit interchange at Castletown Tara/Blundelstown, will significantly impinge on Tara and cause irrevocable damage to the cultural integrity of its landscape.

Though perhaps unlikely to bring about the collapse of Dáil Éireann, the credibility of the Department with responsibility for heritage will be severely undermined should this development proceed as planned. The damage that would be inflicted on Tara, our national pride and our international standing as guardians of European heritage will be all the more devastating.

Choosing one of the other equally viable alternatives, however, has much to recommend it. It is abundantly clear that it is possible to resolve the traffic problems of Co Meath whilst also preserving this unique place intact for future generations – and, along with it, our national dignity. Such a course of action is likely to prove to be less costly, and to alleviate Meath's crippling commuter problems sooner than the proposed route. In short, it is possible to have our cake and eat it.

A principled and politically-expedient stand such as this would also send a clear signal to our European partners that we are a nation that has come of age – not a nouveau riche neighbour all too willing to brush aside our priceless heirlooms and replace them with the hollow promise of development and prosperity. Such a decision would also stand as an enduring monument to our nation's maturity and self-esteem. To contemplate otherwise would be a monumental mistake.

Joe Fenwick

Department of Archaeology, NUI, Galway

US foreign policy

Two sides to Condi Rice

"Florence Nightingale" Rice has been flying around Europe and the Middle East carpeting the way for this month's George Bush visit. This year is the 60th Anniversary of the defeat of a nasty and evil organization trying to get a large foothold for control of the world. However, nasty people have not gone away you know! The United States and the United Kingdom form an axis of evil everywhere they land their feet, for example Cuba (Guantanamo Bay) and Shannon (the brutalising of the neutral soul of Ireland), Falluja and Najaf in Iraq etc.

This very attractive lady is presenting a screen of beauty, concern and humility, yet the reality behind the facade is one of mayhem, slaughter, and bullying, shown with a smiling rose in one hand and a beautiful new F16 and Abrahams tank in the other!

Peter Kennedy

Sutton, Dublin 13

A new left is needed

Decision Time

The arrest of suspected money launderers and other so-called "subversives" pushed the real story of the biggest theft in the history of the southern state off the news headlines last week. This was very convenient for Minister of Health, Mary Harney, just as the campaigning begins in two by-elections.

The Health Act 1970 (clarified by a Supreme Court decision in 1976) decreed that health boards should provide in-patient services free of charge to persons suffering from physical or mental disability. In 1976 the Department of Health sent a circular to health boards stating that charges should not apply to medical card holders. But health boards continued to charge medical holders for in-patient services.

Therefore, since 1976 the state has been engaged in mass theft: illegally charging elderly medical card holders for long-term residential care.

In 1978 a Chief Justice advised health boards of potential legal problems with the practice. Similarly, the ombudsman warned that the practice was wrong in 2001. Former Health Minister Michael Martin knew about it in 2003. Over eleven Ministers of Health (including ministers from the so-called "opposition" parties of Labour and Fine Gael) stood over this theft of over one billion euro from the most vulnerable in our society.

The establishment, supported by the Labour Party and the Greens, is whipping itself into a frenzy to expose the "criminality" of the Republicans and Sinn Féin. But where is the Labour Party's and the Greens' frenzy of criticism for the biggest criminals of all: Harney and her predecessors in the Department of Health?

There is no real criticism because Labour agrees with the principle of charging the most vulnerable in our society for health care. They explicitly agree with the future confiscation of old peoples welfare entitlements to pay for institutional care. Their electoral pact with Fine Gael (being enacted in the upcoming by-elections ahead of a "democratic" decision on its electoral strategy at a national conference in May) ensures that criticism of corruption and previous governments will be kept to a minimum so as not to taint their future coalition partner's prospects.

Rory Hearne

Deputy President/Campaigns Officer USI

Though I am not a Sinn Féin supporter I have been sickened at the unanimity of the media and political establishments' assault on Sinn Féin. I would like to point out just some of the hypocrisies involved.

Fianna Fáil are not expected to accept collective responsibility for the criminality of their members, even when, like Ray Burke, those members held high ranking positions in government. Besides this, the tax amnesties of successive governments, supported by all the parties now attacking the Sinn Féin leadership, amounted to an acceptance of the criminality of the rich. Apparently robbery is ok as long as respectable means are employed to effect it.

The British and American governments are responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocents, in quite as brutal fashion as Robert McCartney or Jean McConville, through their illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. The Irish government has colluded in these murders by contributing Shannon airport to the war effort. How can we take any of these people seriously when they talk about peace?

Since the accusers seem to be at least as wicked as those they are accusing there can be no moral foundation for the attack on Sinn Féin. The real motive is obviously political opportunism. Sinn Féin have placed themselves at the head of a growing disaffection with the rise in relative poverty in our cities. They express the widespread anger at the decline in the standard of public services affecting urban working class areas. As a result their support is growing in these areas at the expense of both the government and opposition parties. These parties' policies on such issues as privatisation and public housing are often indistinguishable.

Should we then be surprised that, when it comes to trampling on Sinn Féin, Pat Rabbitte and Michael McDowell sit astride the same breed of high horse?

Dave Lordan

Monkstown

Following the promised introduction of the new "doctor only" medical card, I expected an avalanche of complaints from concerned individuals and groups, especially from the political left. I have been disappointed by the lack of an in-depth response. If one does a comparative study between people with different income levels, one discovers that, except for those in receipt of medical cards, the more one earns, the least one has to pay for medical expenses.

To outline this phenomena I will set out what will be the position of four individuals on different income levels, and how much it will cost them for medical expenses. For convenience I will assume that each one visits a doctor four times a year, at a cost of €160. And that each pays the maximum under the Drugs Refund Scheme towards prescribed medicines per year, that is €85X12 = €1020. This gives a total of €1180. Where a tax payer claims tax relief on these payments the first €125 is disallowed. Therefore they will be allowed tax relief on €1055. The following calculations will apply.

1 A person on a salary of €8,000 per year who we assume will get a doctor only medical card will not have to pay for the doctor, but will have to pay €1,020 for prescribed medications, they will not pay income tax, so will not be able to reclaim tax relief on this payment.

2 A person working part time due to incapacitation, with an income of €9,200 per year will pay no tax, as a result they can not claim tax relief.

They will pay a total of €1,180

3 A person with an income of €17,000 pays tax @ 20%. They can claim tax relief on €1055 @ 20% = €211. Their outlay of €1180 is reduced by €211

Therefore they pay €969

4 The final example is of a person with an income of €50,000 paying tax at 42% Their tax relief is €1,055 @ 42%=€443.10. Therefore they end up paying €1,180-€443.10.

They end up paying €736.90

An examination of this comparison exposes a basic flaw with the whole system of assistance towards the costs of medical expenses. Except for those with a full medical card, the state contributes more towards the costs of medicines for those on the highest income, rather than those on very low incomes. How come our left wing politicians do not expose these inequitable arrangements, and look for changes to take place. This applies especially to our self-proclaimed socialist Taoiseach. Can it be that the people with the power to expose this anomaly, those with power and influence, are the very ones who gain most from a system that favours those on high incomes? I await a response.

Brendan O'Donoghue

Co Carlow