Something rotten in the state of Fianna Fáil

I BEG to differ with your editorial claim (February 20) that the cabinet is full of “decent” people and we need to return to some golden age of politics and public service.

If we are really to tackle the failures of this country, then we need to do so honestly.

Pretending there was a time when the Catholic Church didn’t abuse people or when politics wasn’t corrupt is more evidence of how deep in denial we are about the scale of change we need to face up to. We had a civil war because one man’s ego could not accept he lost the argument over the Treaty. He went on to set up Fianna Fáil and fund it with money stolen from people who were conned into buying shares in the Irish Press and who had had been forced to emigrate to the USA. The mentality of that party has always been corrupt and 80 years later it has rotted the pillars of state to the core.