We are always being told there is no alternative. Well, there is one

IN the lead-in to the second Lisbon referendum Foreign Minister Micheál Martin warned us darkly of the unspecified but terrible fate that would befall us if we voted against the treaty.

We were told tighter political integration into a wider Europe was the only way forward. There was simply no alternative.

A year later, there was simply no alternative to NAMA, there was no alternative to a bank bailout and, this year, there is no alternative to severe cutbacks. There is no alternative to citing the new children’s hospital at the Mater site in Dublin either.