OPINION: Alan a legend in his own sitting room!

SIR – Alan Kelly (Sunday Independent, January 1^st) tells us of alleged abuse suffered by him, and mysteriously also by his family and staff, during his short term in power (which he loves, he says) in the preceding shambles of a government when his Labour party was in office.

Easy words to impart, yet where is the hard evidence of being abused on the street and being otherwise hurt by public opinion? Did his staff save him from the whole truth also, as he attempts to qualify by his laboured explanations?

Pinch of salt territory this, because at the time all of this was supposed to be happening, we would have been blue in the face listening to his self-pitying ramblings on the subject. Alan is adamant that he speaks for the ‘working class’ and those who cope with poverty and the ‘four-letter word’ for sewage flowing down their streets, and which he desperately wants to do something about – but did not have enough time to do so when he was environment

minister in the last government is his inference.

I’m confident those he claims to represent never saw any benefit to alleviation of their existing hardship.

We remember when he scraped in as a trailing TD at the last general election on a tiny vote, which happened after everyone else had gone home – and his subsequent jumping about with such victorious glee –  it was all I could do not to imagine he had performed some type of Castro-inspired coup d’état over the rest. It was both comical and arrogant, and he continues into 2017 in the same frame of mind –  that of a legend in his own sitting room who has serious fish to fry.

I do not think many of us are listening to his claims of being a ‘stronger and more focused man.’ But, of course, he assured us that, over the holiday period, in the great tradition of Dáil and Senate stalwarts, that getting out for ‘the few pints’ was on his list of things to do.

I have seen a goodly number of TDs who go for ‘the few pints’ as if it’s one the most important part of their duties, and not just at Christmas, and seldom does it stop at a few pints.

Robert Sullivan,

Bantry.