Michael Clifford tells us that if we want the political system to serve "the good of the people, and not the good of the individual", we need to fix "a failed electoral system" (News, 2 January).

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The reason the country is in a mess has nothing to do with the electoral system. It has all to do with a small number of the most powerful in the land having too much power for too long and believing themselves untouchable.

Single-seat constituencies and list systems will give more power to political party insiders to determine who represents us in the Dáil. Therefore, changing our electoral system will make a small number of powerful people even more powerful.

Changing the electoral system to a single-seat constituency and/or list system will, therefore, not contribute to "the good of the people". It will, however, increase the power of the very people who largely contributed to our problems in the first place.

A Leavy

Shielmartin Drive

Sutton, Dublin 13

Michael Clifford manages to provide a textbook example of 'conflation'.

He claims that just about anybody "might well despair of the ideals that have informed the country over the last 90 years".

But what were the ideals of the signatories of the Proclamation of the Republic?

The only part of the Proclamation that even suggests what the country's laws might be says: "The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens." But it also says: "We place the cause of the Irish Republic under the protection of the Most High God. Whose blessing we invoke upon our arms."

More than enough there to argue with, if I had the space and time.

The 'republic' the men of 1916 wanted was not even one in the minimalist sense of being a non-monarchy, given that they wanted to put some German prince in charge.

Whatever else the Proclamation signatories were, durable political philosophers they were not.

Frank Desmond

Evergreen Road, Cork