Thank you for Michael Clifford's (Comment, 8 November) thoughtful and helpful piece on the national grief process occasioned by the spectacular death of the Celtic Tiger at the hands of its keepers. While it may be comforting to think of grieving as a linear process between denial and acceptance, the meat on the bone is anger, bargaining and depression in one unholy mishmash.

Japan has endured such ill-health for nigh on 20 years after its Tiger deflated and many of its leaders had the good grace to fall on their swords. Not so in Ireland, as Mr Clifford points out. Our mandarins believe in a different reincarnation that defies taking ownership of wrongdoing. As the movie Ordinary People dramatised, grieving is forgiveness of self and others, but if there is no sin, there is no forgiveness and no end of depressive grief.

Liam Tuffy,

8 Nephin Drive,

Enniscrone, Co Sligo.