Continued Budget austerity is horrific

The Troika says that due to a monthly deficit of €1bn between government income and expenditure, it is not possible to ease austerity in the forthcoming Budget.

This is horrific news. Our national debt is growing by €12bn annually, due to bad housekeeping and the high cost of public service salaries, social welfare and other services.

After October, we will no longer have the Troika to guide us. We need people who have ability and courage to get us out of this mess.

Our performance over the past five years needs improvement. The people who got us in this mess are enjoying the fruits of their mismanagement. That some of those people had prepared boltholes shows their intentions: bank robbery without guns.

Our present administration is having success in tackling bankruptcy abroad. In olden times, when people did not know any better, they looked to the Church for leadership, but must now realise how wrong they were. The Church has discredited itself by the misdeeds of its hierarchy, and not its laity.

Our people are burdened without having to pay for the sins of their clerics, and the Church should fulfil its obligation to pay what was agreed, some years ago, as a substitute to imprisonment for the offenders, but it allowed persistent child abusers to roam freely.

Richard Prendergast

Rathcormac

Co Cork