Union threats - We cannot afford strikes in this crisis

THE coming weeks, before Brian Lenihan publishes his budget, will play a very large part in defining this country’s immediate and medium-term future.

Government and trade union policies will decide whether we retain what is left of our economic independence or whether, after less than a century of self governance, we become a colony again.

If we cannot accept the reality of the crisis swamping us we will not be, as we were before, ruled from Dublin Castle or the Vice Regal Lodge, but from some relatively minor back office at the International Monetary Fund headquarters on 19th Street in Washington, DC.