Mr Kenny should do the right thing

Taoiseach Enda Kenny won the hearts of the nation with his recent emotional apology to the survivors of the Magdalene laundries.

Now, he needs to apply the same set of emotions to the plight of the decent hard working people of this country who are carrying a burden that is as cruel and brutal as anything that was visited on the unfortunate women in the laundries.

Paying back the debt incurred by the bankers and speculators is driving people to the depths of despair — emotional, mental and physical.

People are committing suicide because of debt, families are breaking up and the elderly who have lost their investments and pensions are living in fear of dying in poverty.

Yet the politicians in government and those in opposition are earning indecent wages in the middle of all this hardship. As leader of this country, with a population of some 4.5 million, he is earning around €30,000 more than the Prime Minister of Britain, with a population of 52 million. What a joke — a very painful sick one.

Mr Kenny is no different than CJ Haughey who told us to tighten our belts during the recession of the ’80s and lived it up while we all put our shoulders to the grindstone. He is doing the very same thing and doesn’t seem to realise it — or doesn’t want to.

Look in the mirror, Mr Kenny, it is the same circus, but different clowns. The elephant in the room of politicians’ wages needs to be immediately dealt with. Through the letters pages of the Irish Examiner and as a citizen of this country who worked through the recession of the 1980s and has seen wages slashed in half in the current one, I challenge Mr Kenny to do the right thing.

Are you a great Irish leader, or were the tears you shed for the Magdalene women an act — can you hear the rest of us crying now as the bank debt is bleeding the life from us and flogging us to death?

Are you another Haughey, or are you the decent politician that we would all like to think you are?

Tom Fitzgerald

Askeaton

Co Limerick