Who's to blame for Ireland's ills? Time to look in the mirror

Doesn't anything relating to politics make for depressing reading of late? Who can we trust? What direction are we going? And - most importantly for the Irish - who can we blame?! Fianna Fail brought us the biggest harvest. We lorded it, spent too much, made bad decisions and lost it all. The result? Boot them out.

Fine Gael were elected on a landslide by promising to change the way politics works and were prepared to make the hard decisions. Austerity was here. They stuck to the Brian Lenihan four-year plan and had the balls to implement it. We did not get to the Promised Land, but we seem to be on high enough ground to see it.

Unfortunately we - the "great unwashed" - don't see it that way, we have enough of austerity. Result, kick them out and make way for the "Shinners" and Independents. The Shinners will abolish water rates and the household charge, but are like the bold schoolboy who copied his homework - they have the answer, but can't explain the mathematics that got him there.

The Independents seem to have inhaled too much of what was exhaled by a former colleague and will be happy doing a "Jackie Healy-Rae" deal when the time comes. Sure, you have to look after number one. Back at square one again, nothing learned!

Well, I'm off to bed now, already tired of the word politics. I hope I'll fall into a nice deep sleep listening to the therapeutic sound of rainwater slowing filling up my toilet cistern. Meanwhile, the rest of you run around like a flock of frightened sheep looking for a gap in the ditch which will lead you to the promised land.

If you want to know who destroyed this country then just look in the mirror. Until Ireland and its politicians have the maturity to properly analyse its problems and explain the solutions (and we, the people of Ireland, have the confidence in our parliament to implement them) we're all fecked.

Through all of Ireland's troubles the only ones that remained in situ were the senior civil servants who advised the government/schoolteachers what to do and, indeed, are still doing it. It is they who run the country.

Thank God, we Irish have someone left to blame. I think Mark Twain had those very people in mind when he said "they would never have given us the vote if they thought it made any difference".

Eugene McGuinness

Kilkenny city

Despite paying nearly half of all income taxes, the continued discrimination against the self-employed reflects a dysfunction in our political system. The contrast between the huge increase in the tax burden on ordinary families on the one hand and the very modest clawback of huge boom time spending rises on the other.

That dysfunction arises from several factors: Firstly, all Cabinet Ministers sitting around the Economic Management Committee are former public servants with multiple public pensions. Secondly, almost all those advising them - civil servants, NESC, ESRI or university academics - are also net beneficiaries of the tax system (ie they pay tax but, directly or indirectly, receive their remuneration from taxation).

Thirdly, this minority of net beneficiaries of our tax system have strong and well-funded lobbies - unions and professional bodies - to protect them. Unlike taxpayers and mortgage borrowers, they have a lot of muscle when it comes to getting their view across in the media.

By contrast, taxpayers have no one to defend them at the Cabinet table. They have no one of a similar mind in Government buildings. Or in the many think-tanks whose clamouring for ever higher taxes and spending get so much attention in the media and on Twitter. They are, in fact, almost invisible to the policy-making elite.

So they are ignored by government, perhaps understandably given the lack of a champion on opposition benches. Instead, squeezing into a crowded left-wing space, opposition parties complain that budgets are not "progressive enough". But half of all income tax is paid by the top 5pc of earners. Just how much more do Sinn Féin/Anti Austerity Alliance/Fianna Fail want them to pay? And how will they create jobs if job creators get fed up being the line of least resistance?

The recent by-elections suggest that something has changed, however. Taxpayers are angry at being taken for granted and in the absence of any alternative are opting for Independents.