TOM KINDLON (May 7) complains about “gender discrimination against male candidates” in political party selections. Where has he being living? The Dáil has been more than 90% male since 1922.

COULD disability payments be pegged to pensions?

IN his letter (August 20), Brendan Casserly wonders whether the media hype up the failure rate in Leaving Cert maths and whether the figures could be similar for English, French and geography. The short answer is no, with French being the closest with approximately one-third of the number who didn’t pass maths.

CONTRARY to Barry Walsh’s claim (Letters, May 10), my call for a referendum on the Civil Partnership Bill is nothing to do with a desire to “turn Ireland back into a church-dominated theocracy”.

IN his letter (April 28), Tom Kindlon asks in respect of the proposed Civil Partnership Bill: “Why are we being denied the chance to have our say in a referendum?”

THE IFA (April 2) and Matt Harper (Letters, April 19) have highlighted the wideranging ramifications of the Civil Partnership Bill for cohabiting couples.

LEO Armstrong (Letters, February 27) may well be right that “greedy professionals” are affecting the services that ought to be available to his son with special needs.

I FULLY accept Tom Kindlon’s points in his letter (‘State pensioners spared budget cuts’, January 19).

IN his letter (January 19), Tom Kindlon asserts that all people who rely on the state for their income, except pensioners, suffered deductions in the December budget.

CONTRARY to the impression given by Michael Mernagh in his letter (‘Retired public workers not living in luxury’, January 13), I never claimed a large percentage of them lived in opulence.

TOM KINDLON (Letters, January 7) should know that only a small number of retired public sector workers live in the lap of opulence.

FOLLOWING the announcement that the pensions of retired public sector workers are not to be cut (they were also not affected by the pension levy) and the exclusion of pensions from the cutbacks in social welfare, should we assume pensioners are the new untouchables in Irish society?

IN his letter (November 13), Nick Folley asks which type of public sector worker do we think is overpaid?

I BELIEVE the system for college entry would be improved if everyone sat a common set of aptitude tests.

I BELIEVE the system for college entry would be improved if everyone sat a common set of aptitude tests.

WE hear yet again of the low percentage of Leaving Cert students taking honours maths (May 29).

I HOPE that whoever takes over from Niall Crowley as CEO of the Equality Authority will ensure it takes a more balanced view in relation to gender rather than being some sort of feminist stronghold.

BILLY WALSH says "any decent democratic state should cherish all of its citizens regardless of age or health status" (Letters, November 4).

IN his letter (October 7), Tony Proctor suggests religious influence in Irish schools may be the reason why there are problems with levels of mathematical attainment here.

IN his letter (October 1), Peadar Ó Laoire complains that the Drugs Payment Scheme monthly maximum fee may rise to €105 in the upcoming budget and contrasts this with the situation in the North where the prescription fee is to be scrapped.

WHERE is the gender equality in Egyptian consultant Dr Emad Massoud having to serve four years in jail here for breast cancer insurance fraud while his wife’s three-year sentence was suspended because the judge “did not want both parents of their family to be incarcerated at the same time”?

LABOUR Women chair Sinéad Ní Chulacháin, tell us that “the Labour party supports linking political State funding with better gender balance (Letters, February 23).

WITH all the focus on “gender imbalances” in society, why is the gender breakdown not given when the Health & Safety Authority workplace fatalities figures come out each year?

WHILE I agree with Sarah Egan (Letters, December 12) that the new Leaving Cert timetable will be an improvement for many students, it is clear that the Minister for Education, Mary Hanafin, “could have done better”.

AS somebody whose illness, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), was adversely affected by an intense series of exams, and who knows the health of other people with ME is also at risk from the exertions involved in sitting the Leaving Cert, I am disappointed with the new timetable.

TOM KINDLON (Letters, October 17) takes me to task for highlighting the low proportion of women (12%) in the Dáil.

TOM KINDLON (Letters, October 17) correctly points out that “domestic violence is a terrible problem, but studies show it is not just women who suffer from it”.

ANTHONY LEAVY (Letters, October 16) desperately tries to link the fact that so many of the calls to Women’s Aid went unanswered with the lack of women in the Dáil. But he fails to point out that organisations for men — such as Amen — have had a lot of trouble getting even a tiny fraction of the funding given to women’s organisations.

SHOULD it not be the job of the electorate to decide who they want to elect rather than, as the Labour party would like, gender quotas of some sort being enshrined in law? (Letters, June 1).

LABOUR Women chair Sineád Ní Chulacháin says, when in power, Labour will bring in gender quotas for candidates for political parties (Irish Examiner letters, June 1).

ANTHONY LEAVY (Irish Examiner letters, March 27) seems to miss the reason why Patrick McGinnity (Letters, March 19) mentioned that “the majority of industrial accidents and fatalities involve men because they do most of the high-risk jobs”.

RATHER than dealing with the particular point raised by Patrick McGinnity in his letter headlined ‘Domestic violence campaign vilifies men’ (Irish Examiner letters, January 16), Kirsi Hanafin, the Labour Party’s Women and Equality Officer, seems to try to divert our attention away from the Women’s Aid advertising campaign, mentioning issues such as genital mutilation and female infanticide (Irish Examiner letters, January 20).

TOM KINDLON (Irish Examiner letters, November 19) states: “In England, English is split into two subjects, English Literature and English Language, at GCSE level with universities only requiring students to pass the English language exam.”

NOW that Fine Gael has reopened the debate about whether Irish could be made optional in the Leaving Cert, it seems an opportune time to question whether English literature should also be compulsory for students at this level.