Public pay hikes will come at the expense of the most vulnerable

DEAR Taoiseach, I listened with great care to your speech at the Inauguration ceremony last week, and I have to say I was impressed. It was a powerful and moving ceremony in many ways, and it was impossible to come away from it without feeling a surge of hope in our capacity as a country.

For me, your speech was the unexpected one. I don’t mean any disrespect at all to President Higgins (that’s going to take a bit of getting used to!) when I say that I was not surprised by the powerful restatement of values represented by what he had to say. You spoke before him, and so you had the somewhat more difficult task of anticipating his vision.

You did that well, but more surprisingly, you also chose to align yourself with that vision in a very explicit way. Our new President would later speak of a wounded society, and of the greed and individualism that brought us there. Before he did, you referred to the fact that in giving a new President so resounding a mandate, the people of Ireland had set out their own hopes and dreams.