Bullying, lying Government makes me despair

I despair at how this country is ‘governed’.

I worked hard, reared six children and retired after 44 years in the public service.

For most of those years, I envied the big money earned by my friends in the private sector.

This was rebalanced in the last 10 years of my career. It is unfair that public service employees are being pilloried. We have lost our sovereignty and there should be a fundamental rethink of our EU membership. Alignment with the UK or the US would serve our interests better.

Austerity has failed. It is time to act when the Government turns on its own people. Ordinary people, whose efforts have sustained this country, feel threatened, oppressed, intimidated, bullied and abused by this government, which has broken all of its election promises.

Arrogance and hostility are the order of the day. With unprecedented levels of unemployment, wage cuts, pension cuts, mortgage arrears, negative equity, attacks on the disabled and on childcare and the socially disadvantaged, the dismantling of the gardaí, the breakdown in law and order, the unfair property tax, water charges, septic tank charges, coupled with threatening, bullying, arrogant statements from the Revenue Commissioners.

Ministers Hogan, Rabbitte, Shatter, Gilmore, et al, we seem to be now living in a dictatorship. Where is the fairness and justice enshrined in the Constitution?

Is it any wonder there is such despair and that young people are leaving in droves?

Where is the leadership? What are they doing to this country?

B Naughton

Knocknacarra

Galway