Typical McDowell up is down thinking. I'm equal as I like, so sod the rest of them. Isn't it wonderful how the parties that came after the tweedledum and tweedledee of FF and FG are even more loopy and useless than that pair?

I'd like to see where McDowell said inequality is necessary. If I recall correctly, he aid it was inevitable, which is very different. The role of a government is not to eliminate inequality. That can and was achieved in the socalist regimes of eastern Europe and still goes on today in places like North Korea. It's simply a matter of removing opportunity and any reward for hard work.

The role of a government in a free market is to make sure that every individual has the opportunity to better themselves through their own effort. The current government has done a good job in this respect, eliminating all discrimination in the workplace and allowing people who work harder to take home more of the money they earn.

I would like to see more movement in this respect, starting with a flat tax rate on all earnings like that which exists in Estonia. Also more effort should be made on educating people over 40 years of age in new technology and areas where different oppotunities now exist in the Irish market.

Government should be an enabler not a nanny.

Excellent post Keith.

Is Bundoran the social capital of Ireland?
Theres a lot of stuff that goes on there in the dark.

Actually Mc dowell said that inequality is an incentive.

I think Berties caring sharing socialism was well summed up by the picture of the hospital patient in a delapidated room on a trolly in a hospital a few miles down the road from where he was making his big talk--there wont be any action as usual--the picture was on the front of Mondays evening Herald.