Charity should not end at home

WITH all due respects to your columnist Matt Cooper (‘Isn’t it time we got real about the cost of overseas development aid?’, October 22), to compare the very real suffering in Ireland caused by the economic catastrophe with the starvation and loss of life in the Third World is simply not to compare like with like.

To mention a few contrasts: the people of the Third World consider themselves fortunate if they get clean water out of a tap (so as to avoid the cholera which, for instance, is currently menacing Haiti); never mind bottled water.

They regard themselves as lucky if they learn to read and write: secondary or tertiary education is way beyond their means. And, to take the most basic comparison of all, the life expectancy at birth in sub-Saharan Africa averages 37 years whereas here the figure is 80.