Flight shows how country has gone off-course

DEPUTY Michael Ring is to be congratulated for raising the issue of the president using a helicopter to go to a football match in Co Mayo because it gets right to the heart of why Ireland got into this mess and why it has so spectacularly failed to get out of it.

Finance Minister Brian Lenihan claims it takes about €53 billion to run the country, but where is the evidence he needs such an amount — why not €40bn or €70bn?

If we were to get a line-by-line itemised bill for every cent the state spends — just as you do at the supermarket showing what you’ve spent — we’d find that an extra pension payment to a former minister here and there, a helicopter trip by the president here and there, claims by TDs for mileage and attendance allowances, the cost of ministers’ families using the state car as a personal taxi service or joining them on foreign trips at the taxpayers’ expense all add up.

The total amount of all these “small” abuses of taxpayers’ money might only be a few million. But that few million could be enough to pay for a cervical cancer vaccine programme or allow a school retain its special needs teachers or provide the elderly with home alarm kits, etc.

In a time when every cent actually does matter it is right and proper that abuses of taxpayers’ funds are brought to light because until Fianna Fáil politicians (of whom the president is one) start to appreciate that there is a difference between their official role and their personal life, they will continue to have nothing to offer to solve the recession which they caused.

So, instead of sneering at Michael Ring we should — like him — be looking at the bigger picture and how these numerous abuses affect all of us.

Desmond FitzGerald

Commercial Road

Canary Wharf

London