Pension furore: Cowen on another planet

THE furore over the payments to EU Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn once again highlights the complete other worldliness of Taoiseach Brian Cowen and his view of just where his wages are coming from.

I am owner/manager of a small to medium sized enterprise. At a recent gathering of my peers I found many of them on the verge of despair. One told me his only hope of getting finance to keep his family business going for another year was to sell his home. What will he sell the following year?

Meanwhile, our Taoiseach, for political reasons, appointed a retired member of his party to be our EU commissioner and seemed completely devoid of any sense of the state of the nation’s finances in that he did not ask her to agree to forego her existing entitlements at least until her term as commissioner had ended.