Media’s denial of seriousness of situation will only cause more pain

Michael Clifford’s article of March 26 is typical of the denial being preached in the media about the causes and seriousness of both our situation in 2010 and our present situation.

He blames it all on the fact that a century after 1916 ‘nobody wants to govern’ except ‘the Redmonites’. The fact that the Irish parliamentary party led by John Redmond has not existed since 1918 and our current problems derive from more recent times seems to be lost on him.

Firstly he ignores the fact that Ireland was bankrupted by the decisions of a small number of of its most powerful citizens during the post-2000 boom and that resulted in an €85bn bailout.

Secondly he is back in the unrealistic Celtic Tiger days when he rejoices at the results of the recent election. By accepting the media message during the election campaign that all in the garden would be rosy if we elected a hung Dail, we made the same mistake as we did during the boom-time elections.

Then our media supported decisions which trebled government spending and similarly trebled bank lending. They were in denial then about the dangers and all citizens of this country have suffered from the consequences since.

Now the media preaches the myopic philosophy that the current hung Dail scenario will solve all our problems. It is foolhardy and a mistake. It is not in the interest of the citizens of this Republic who have suffered enough from a similar attitude of denial in the past.

A. Leavy

1 Shielmartin Drive

Sutton

Dublin 13