IRELAND'S largest aid agency, Concern, says thank you for your support during the year. It is two years since the tsunami and we are forever indebted to you.

I am delighted to report we have completed our emergency rehabilitation work in the affected countries. Our work in Sri Lanka will be completed at the end of this year, 2006. We are due to complete our housebuilding project in Indonesia by mid-2007. The full story of our work in Sri Lanka, Indonesia and India is available on our website, www. concern. net.

At the beginning of 2006 Concern responded to the earthquake in Pakistan and the food crisis in Niger. It supplied resources and personnel to alleviate the food crisis in parts of the Horn of Africa. It coped with the deteriorating security situation in Darfur, which has huge implications for the two million people living in camps.

We responded to smaller emergencies as a result of conflict in East Timor, and food security in Kenya and Somalia.

Concern also opened a new programme area in Katanga in the Democratic Republic of Congo. All this work is just a small portion of the projects you support. Most of Concern's work is in development, improving the daily lives of people and is well away from the glare of the spotlight.

Because of your support we are able to help the poorest of the poor in the 30 countries we work in.

Tom Arnold, CEO Concern, Camden Street, Dublin 2

Reading music from beyond the grave

FROM the ether the ghostly voice of Brian Lenihan phoned Lyric Radio to request a piece of classical music for his 'friend' Charlie Haughey. This was to accompany his reading of the Moriarty Report. The choice?

Anything from the 'The Thieving Magpie' by Rossini.

Wm Clayton Love, Kilteragh Pines, Foxrock, Dublin 18

Santa won't solve all our problems

I FIND the coverage of current affairs in the Sunday Tribune stimulating. It is never over the top and, while I may not always agree with the opinions expressed, it gives me the feeling that I am living in a democratic republic in which tolerance and respect for the opinions of others is the norm. A number of aspects of the current affairs coverage on 24 December, 2006, however gave me reason for worry. Terry Prone's article assures us that politics is not about "complaining whinges" about the past but is about "a better future" in comparison with "a squalid present". All we need according to Prone, is a "handsome", "young" politician who offers the voters "something hopeful". Anne Marie Hourihane, normally a gem of a journalist, is hoping that the cupboard doors will hold the mess of many of our lives over the Christmas period. All we have to do is to provide the children with "a proper Christmas tree". Lastly Nuala O'Faolain advises us to "forget the cynicism" and look at the "hopeful and pleasant". All of this sounds to me like a belief that Santa Claus will solve all our problems.

Diarmuid Doyle is a bit more hard bitten in his comments. He reckons many people "retain their critical faculties" and see "that the recent past has relevance to today". I am more convinced of the efficacy of Doyle's school of political philosophy. We have to realise power corrupts politicians. We must learn from past mistakes and not be taken in by 'hopeful' promises about the future made by politicians, however plausible and "handsome".

A Leavy, 1 Shielmartin Drive, Sutton, Dublin 13

All the taxes Bono didn't leave behind

IF BONO had moved part of his business from the UK to avoid tax would Tony Blair have offered him a knighthood for his humanitarian work? U2 moved part of their business from Ireland to avoid tax when the government abolished the unlimited tax free status enjoyed by artists in favour of a very generous 250,000 annual tax free allowance!

Would Blair have been allowed to do such a thing if Bono, as he did in Croke Park to Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, challenged him to meet the UN aid target for the Developing World out of taxpayers' money and when the government committed to that target moved part of his business out of the UK to avoid tax?

While Bono's apparent hypocrisy may be amusing it does raise the issue, how we pay for global justice in terms of meeting the Millennium Development Goals in order to "make poverty history"? How will governments raise enough revenue to fund aid and debt relief if people who are held up to us as model humanitarians adopt a "do as I say not as I do" attitude to paying taxes?

The Tax Justice Network has estimated that the amount of funds held by wealthy individuals in tax havens could generate a staggering $255bn in additional tax revenue annually . . . enough to finance those same development goals! In other words, the poorest of the world's poor pay dearly for the inequities in the global taxation system and any award that even unwittingly hides that reality must be exposed.

Ronan Tynan, Blackrock, Co Dublin

RSA has lost sight of its objective

LAST week the chairman of the Road Safety Authority informed us that the national driving test is a "sick joke". He said it will be harder to get a driving permit.

Nothing wrong with that but to suggest that a driver who passes the test must have a driver with four years' experience sitting beside him at all times for a further year is stupid.

Surely if the test is made as tough as is necessary, and after a person undertakes it, they are either fit to drive or they are not. In southwest Dublin alone there are thousands of good young students who will be soon be finishing college. They will learn to drive and do their driving test after which time they have a constitutional right to a job. The RSA is suggesting after students pass a stringent driving test, that instead of getting a job, they drive around the country with someone for a year. Are those in the RSA practising what they preach?

Did they sit beside their daughters/sons for two years while they waited for a test and for a year after they obtained it?

Are RSA members being influenced by the upper classes so they think that, like those who were earning a 250,000 per annum from state or semistate positions, buying their own islands or getting hand outs from friends, that none of us have to work?

Speed is the main cause of accidents. How many times have you heard the car hit a tree or pole on a dangerous bend"?

Why was there a tree on a dangerous bend? Why is the speed limit on motorways 120km/h when there is black ice in winter? Where are the modern electronic signs to change the speeds in harmony with the weather conditions and allow higher speeds only when it is safe and impose slower speed limits when there is ice, rain or fog? These are the issues the RSA should be addressing instead of introducing laws short of being accompanied by the 1940s goose-step.

Tom Fennelly, Firhouse, Dublin 24

Bono does not speak for the poor, sir

THE acceptance of an accolade from the British Empire, which is built upon and continues to sustain third-world poverty, excludes Bono from speaking for the poor. Bono provides a smokescreen for the continued rape of Africa.

His friends in Anglo-American Gold announced £16.8bn profit for the previous six months from one of their 67 gold mines, as he sought £12bn over four years, from the eight richest nations on earth.

Not to mention that the silver, pearls, diamonds, platinium, steel, cobalt, coal (etc), and above all, the oil and gas extraction which supplies about 21% of the energy needs of the west's and directly fuels our economy, always seem distant from Bono's agenda.

Bono and his pals have long supported the idea of Africa being a "developing" nation, rather than a nation systematically being impoverished by the west. Bono may feel genuine empathy for the poor of Africa.

However, if he wishes to improve their lot in life, he should address the issues which have sustained their systemic impoverishment, and not cloud them by talking about easing an illegitimate debt imposed by the world bank, created specifically to maintain this poverty, and then accepting a knighthood from the Queen.

Paul O'Toole, 11 Thorndale Park, Artane, Dublin 5