21 May 2009 Edition

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Mála Poist

Don’t help Fianna Fáil by staying home

I HOPE that all those people who say they are sick and tired of all the politicians don’t stay home on voting day.
Staying at home means that the Government parties won’t get your vote; but it won’t go against them either - so they don’t lose by people staying home and leaving their vote unused and ineffective.
And the same applies if you spoil your ballot. It makes one line in the Irish Times and that’s it. Protest over.
The only way to make Fianna Fáil’s and the Greens’ pips squeak is to get out and vote AGAINST the government by voting FOR another party - and who better than Sinn Féin?
Just imagine the faces of Brian Cowen, Mary Harney and Leo Varadkar if the swing away from the Government went to Sinn Féin.
Now that would make them sit up and take notice.
SEÁN REAGAN,
Dublin 3

 

Greens culpability in cuts

WHILE there is rightly a lot of focus on the failure of Fianna Fáil in the election debate we need to remember that it is a Green minister, John Gormley as Minister for Environment and Local Government, who is responsible for a 300 million euro cut in the provision of social and affordable housing. Millions more have been cut from housing maintenance in local authorities across the state.
From their leafy estates perched on the high moral ground the Greens might not be that bothered about the 56,000 families on the housing waiting lists or the thousands more condemned to squalid, sub-standard inner city flat complexes but they are the people being devastated by these cutbacks.
Preaching to them about vegetarianism and boasting that your party’s posters are bio-degradeable doesn’t do much for people who dodge drug dealers in their stairwells and step over human waste to get to the bus.
LIAM DEMPSEY,
Dublin 8 


An Phoblacht
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Dublin 1
Ireland