Strike mandate ‘an act of collective madness’

IN his response to your editorial headlined ‘Day of action becomes day of cheap beer’, Hugh Cronin (Letters, November 27) is highly disingenuous. Nowhere in your editorial do you claim that “thousands of public servants travelled north of the border.”

The word you used was “some” and that is a fact which has already been verified from many sources.

Further, he goes on to claim you are now advocating “protectionist policies” when in fact there is no such argument proffered.

Yes, Mr Cronin, the INTO has a democratic mandate from its members to strike, and to strike again, but that just makes it an act of collective madness.

The majority isn’t always right, and “merely exercising our right to industrial protest” isn’t always moral.

Whatever happened to our responsibilities to the collective good? The state is spending many billions more than it is capable of raising in taxes partly because past irresponsible government policies have saddled us with a public sector we can ill afford.

It is now seeking belatedly to correct its own mistakes and has absolutely no choice but to make deep cuts in public expenditure.

If, in the face of union intransigence, it fails, then this argument will be over.

No longer will we have a public/private sector divide.

We will all sink together.

James McGrath

Birchgrove

Hollyford

Co Tipperary