Election letter: The Coalition’s wins can’t be denied but neither can their failings

It would be extremely churlish and indeed foolish in the extreme to deny the coalition government credit for bringing about some economic recovery, however lopsided.

Unemployment has been reduced to nine per cent and 136,000 jobs have been created.

Many still argue that influences outside the government’s control were major contributory factors to the recovery, such as the weak euro, low interest rates, and the strength of our main trading partners, the USA and the UK.

It is often difficult however for us ordinary people to gauge the government’s true level of success or failure as a result of the fog of spin and counter spin clouding the issues.

In these circumstances so close to an election, it is entirely legitimate to judge the government’s record based on at least some of those issues totally within their control and unaffected by extraneous influences.

For instance:

1. The health system: crises in emergency departments, the failure to establish universal health insurance, and the failure to abolish the HSE.

2. The fiasco surrounding the setting up of Irish Water.

3. The housing crisis and the subsequent increase of the incidents of homelessness.

4. Poverty in society and the number of children going hungry to school.

5. Treatment of the most vulnerable, the physically and mentally disabled, the aged and carers.

6. Policies and budgets favouring the well off.

7. Legal system reform.

8. Upward only rents.

9. Gang warfare, the unfettered drug culture and rural crime.

10. Democratic revolution and transparency.

11. Unprecedented levels of suicide and suicidal ideation among young people.

As a long term Fine Gael supporter, one is regrettably forced to admit that any objective assessment of these issues can only conclude that overall, the coalition has failed Irish society spectacularly.

It can also be argued that the greatest calamity to befall us was the coalition’s and their predecessors abject capitulation to our EU partners in meekly paying off unsecured bond holders and foisting private bankers’ gambling debts on our shoulders in perpetuity.

John Leahy

Wilton Road

Cork