We sell our resources while neglecting elderly

Your excellent opinion piece, ‘The Plight of the Elderly — We Need a Caring Government’ (Irish Examiner, February 25), is all the more galling when the Government is not only uncaring, but willfully parting with billions of euro in natural resources, sold to unelected private enterprises.

Oil and gas companies will soon declare vast profits on the back of the ten-year ‘free rein’ licences that continue to be granted by an autocratic Minister for Energy.

Just look at the quarterly financial returns of the established oil companies around the world to realise the enormity of the giveaway. My thoughts, when I voted in the general election, of a Labour Party balancing the Government should Fine Gael swing a little too far to the Right, have been demolished.

Until our political system includes wise representatives from all industries at the highest level, our citizens, young and old, will continue to be denied the care that they deserve, and austerity will become the norm.

Joe Brennan

Ballinspittle

Co Cork