Small price to pay for democracy

Some famous man once said that if you wanted evidence for getting rid of democracy all you had to do was talk to the average voter for five minutes.

I was reminded of that reading P Boyd’s letter on Oct 1 giving out about the expenses of politicians and our embassies abroad.

We have a fully functioning democracy set up after nearly 800 years of colonial rule. It costs much less than the flow of funds that went from this island to the neighbouring island during most of that colonial period.

Contrary to P Boyd’s assertion, our economy exports more now than ‘cows and people’.

The cows and the people were a legacy of the same colonial period.

All of us would agree with the writer that the expenses of running the State should be kept to a minimum. In fact it can be argued that they should have been lowered much more from the very beginning of this crisis. The savings involved, however, are not going to solve any of our problems.

It was the decisions made during the Celtic Tiger period, and not the salaries paid, that bankrupt the country.

Anthony Leavy

Sutton

Dublin 13