IF anyone were in any doubt as to what kind of a backward placeIrelandcan still be, they need look no further than the recent news story about a teenager twice refused a place in a school as she was pregnant, then a single mum.

The school has been told to apologise for refusing her the place in 2009 on the basis that the school "was not a haven for young pregnant people or for young mothers". Apologise?! If it was up to me I’d put the people responsible for such a reaction behind bars!

The school in question is a lay-owned, ‘Catholic-ethos’ school – so is this the caring, Christian ethos that the school’s principal wants to promote – refusing education and a warm, caring welcome to a young person when they need it, not once, but twice? It’s disgusting.

I really hope the correct legislation is now swiftly brought in that stops the possibility of this horrendous behaviour from happening in the first place.

True, this may be an isolated incident (Ombudsman for Children Emily Logan said this is the first incident of its kind that she has seen in eight years in the job), but let’s hope that now the law is changed so such despicable treatment of young women can never happen again.

Siobhan Doherty,

Manchester.

IT’S wonderful what comes into your head when cycling. The upcoming Austerity Treaty was what occupied my thoughts as I negotiated the twisted bendy roads of Min na Craoibhe (meenacreeve) as best as I could.

This has to be the stick that breaks the catastrophic money grabbing practices of big financial lending monopolies.

As far as I see it we are in a corner that there is no getting out of, because we cannot get around it, cannot climb over it and we can’t go under it so unless we start baring our teeth and biting back hard, we will be akin to throwaway garbage bloody good to neither man nor beast. If you take a look back through the years, you’ll realise that hindsight is a wonderful thing. It will show you clearly what a bunch of masochist illusionists we are.

We’re suckers for pain and punishment. We started buying land as it was getting more expensive. The more expensive the car or the bigger the four x four was, the higher up on the shopping list it went. We voted them in time after time without a question asked.

Now here we are scraping around, without a pot to piss in, trying to figure out how stupid and short-sighted we were. The reality is to know that you are buying things at a realistic price that you can afford, and never again listen to rubbish from political comedians. 

Austerity means, severity, strictness, sternness, graveness, soberness, asceticism, seriousness, rigor. This means suffering and lots of pain and if you really want that, then you are a masochist. Is that why Enda accompanied by Trapattoni and an entourage of photographers up Croagh Patrick?

It’s about suffrage and individually repenting for your sins, not divine intervention to help you inflict an Austerity plan dreamed up by bankers and speculative financial merchants. That, may I add, does not apply to Trap.

J Woods,

Donegal

VERY disappointing!  Not even a proper discussion will be had as they are restricting it to the Presidential Election. That’s so little that’s it’s an insult to emigrants. Another broken promise! I see the usual ‘straw men’ arguments are being trotted out:

1) ‘Disproportionate Effect’: Nobody has suggested that emigrants would have equal votes to those at home.  Would 3 or 4 seats make that much of a difference?

2) ‘No embassies in some countries’:  Sure, but we do have representation through other countries in all those places.

3) ‘No representation without taxation’: So now we have to pay to be Irish?  Are we to go back to the old days when only property owners had a vote?  Anyway, how many people inIrelandare voting but not paying tax?

Ireland is now the only country in the EU which totally disenfranchises its ex-pats.

Noel Lynch,

Chair,LondonGreen Party.

IT’S a sad situation in the building industry inLondonnow, with Irish contractors employing Eastern Europeans for the most part as they often represent cheaper labour. It seems Irish and English workers are now treated as second-class citizens on building sites. Not happy.

John Kennedy,

London.