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• Catherine Dunne should not have been surprised by the resurgence in emigration ('It's time to add sad new chapter to emigrant tale', Irish Independent, October 2).
The fastest way to financial viability for a country with crippling debts is to allow its currency to depreciate.
Ireland's membership of the eurozone precludes this option. Ireland's predicament was foreseen 20 years ago by the Cambridge economist Wynne Godley.
Following the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, which led to the creation of the euro, Godley wrote: "If a country or region has no power to devalue, and if it is not the beneficiary of a system of fiscal equalisation, then there is nothing to stop it suffering a process of cumulative and terminal decline leading, in the end, to emigration as the only alternative to poverty or starvation." Sound familiar?
Dr John Doherty
Vienna, Austria
Irish Independent
