George Bernard Shaw said “Ireland is the only open-air asylum in Western Europe being run by the inmates”.

As the year 2014 begins with a new flicker of hope, we are being told that our country has allegedly won back its independence from the troika.

On Morning Ireland last week Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney said that his department was working on overdrive to get REPS and AEOS payments out to farmers to alleviate serious cash flow on farms.

There is great debate and talk of a national crisis in Brendan Howlin’s efforts to extract €300m from public sector pay.

Over the last year the culmination of bad weather coupled with cash-flow issues have spelled the end for many small farmers with low income and bad land.

AS Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore contemplate a referendum on giving our European masters sweeping powers to condemn our nation to austerity budgets for generations to come, they should couple with this referendum a question to the electorate — ie “do you favour the capping of all public service pay at €100,000?”

THIS austerity budget of Fine Gael and Labour at the behest of their German/Franco masters is a cowardly attack on the disadvantaged areas and any Fine Gael or Labour backbench TD that voted in these cutbacks has, as Pat Rabbitte told Pat Carey, “no shame”.

I AM writing this letter to Santa because I voted for a brand new Fine Gael TD last spring as FG promised to deliver more than you.

OUR recklessness and tendency to ignore the little things has cost us dearly in every sphere, most recently with the loss of our sovereignty.

I DON’T think anyone can now regard Brian Lenihan as a credible finance minister. Almost two years ago he argued against the nationalisation of AIB — now he bites the bullet.

I WOULD like to warn your readers of the perils of travelling in Athens.

LIVING a lie is what fishermen throughout Ireland and Britain are doing at the moment in relation to conserving fish stocks. It is a problem that nobody wants to talk about and nobody wants to know about.

IT seems the Hidden History TV series get its facts wrong, if some recent instalments are anything to go by.

I’M a fisherman who cannot land a catch without being checked by the many fishery officers based around our coast.