Letters To The Editor 2005-03-12
Say no to right-wing constitution
I would like to congratulate Village for kick-starting the debate on the EU Constitution. At a time when other media outlets are avoiding or ignoring this important issue, the frank exchange between Brendan Young and Proinsias de Rossa MEP was a breath of fresh air.
One of the most striking conclusions which any reader would glean from the discussion was the deeply contradictory nature of the EU Constitution. Proinsias is right when he says that Parts I and II of the text contain many worthy statements and sentiments. However Brendan is also right to highlight the deeply troubling content of Part III of the Constitution, and particularly those sections that deal with economic policy, the internal market, commercial policy and development aid.
Indeed when I first read the Constitution I was struck by the extent to which the detail of Part III actively undermines and negates the possibility of securing any of the positive elements in earlier sections of the text.
Article 1.2 states clearly that the EU is founded "on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities". The Charter of Fundamental Rights in Part II outlines a number of important rights including equality before the law, equality between men and women, the right to social and housing assistance and the right to access health care. The Charter also prohibits discrimination on a wide range of grounds. While most of these rights are circumscribed by already existing national laws and practices and do not offer any new levels of protection to citizens of member states, they are nonetheless welcome.
However, none of these sentiments are compatible with the overwhelming majority of the detailed policy prescriptions contained throughout the Constitution. For example, Proinsias argues that the Constitution gives new powers which would guarantee access to public services. What Proinsias does not say is that at least ten key articles actively undermine the present provision of services such as health and education by opening such services to the market. Articles 130, 156, 161,162, 166, 168, 177, 179, 314 and 315 in Part III of the Constitution not only restate and copperfasten existing right-wing EU economic policy, but substantially add to the drive towards the liberalisation of public services.
The impact of these articles, if the Constitution is ratified, will be a further reduction in public-sector spending by national governments; the erosion of universal health and education provision in countries where such welfare states exist; and the creation of two-tier public services whereby the wealthy can afford good quality services on the private market, and those on low pay or the unemployed will receive an even lower level of provision.
If Proinsias believes that these articles and their consequences chime "well with Labour's constitutional values" who am I to judge? But they do not chime well with the notion of social and redistributed justice which must lie at the heart of any left-wing conception of national or EU economic policy.
Proinsias argues that the Constitution contains clauses that bind "EU values and objectives into policy and lawmaking in internal matters and trade agreements". This is highly questionable. There are no mechanisms for the monitoring or enforcement of the Union's values as stated in Article 1-2 or in the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Indeed the stark absence of such mechanisms to ensure that the Charter is enforced has been widely criticised by human rights organisations, including Amnesty International. This is in clear contrast to the detailed mechanisms for monitoring and sanctioning member states who do not comply with the neo-liberal economic policies detailed in the articles listed above.
At this year's Sinn Féin Ard Fheis, delegates adopted as policy a detailed analysis of the Constitution, entitled "Ireland and the EU Constitution". The document, which is available on our web site (www.sinnfein.ie) lists nine key areas of concern for our party. Not only does the constitution promote economic policies which are bad for people in Ireland and across the EU, it also includes significant developments in the areas of security, defence and foreign policy. In his own analysis of the Constitution available on the Labour Party web site, Proinsias states that "contrary to scaremongering by some Eurosceptics, Ireland retains the right to continue with the traditional military neutrality". This is simply not true.
Article 1.16 states that, "Member states shall actively and unreservedly support the Union's common foreign and security policy in a spirit of loyalty ... and shall comply with the Union's action in this area. They shall refrain from action contrary to the Union's interests or likely to impair its effectiveness." Article 1.41(2) states that, "member states shall undertake to progressively increase their military capabilities". The articles goes on to establish a European Defence Agency whose job it will be to coordinate the increased militarisation of the Union, to which all member states must contribute financially. While the Irish Government retains the right not to send troops into combat, Irish taxpayers will foot the bill irrespective of Irish involvement, and Irish foreign policy cannot in any way undermine such military interventions, even if the Irish people are fundamentally opposed to them. Furthermore, at a time when public-sector spending is already under threat, the Constitution obliges member states to increase military expenditure.
Proinsias argues that article 1.41 provides a safeguard for Irish neutrality when it says that the Union's actions "shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy obligations of certain member states". However he conveniently refrained from quoting the entire article, which commits the Union to develop its security and defence policy in a way that would be "compatible" with NATO. How can Irish neutrality continue to exist in the context of an EU foreign and defence policy – which must be compatible with NATO – to which any Irish Government must "actively and unreservedly support ... in a spirit of loyality"? Unsurprisingly, Proinsias avoids such difficult questions.
The proposed EU Constitution is a long and detailed document, and these are just some of the issues which are causing great concern among progressive political parties, NGOs, trade unions and human rights organisations across the EU. Of equal concern are issues relating to the democratic deficit, transfer of powers to the Union, justice and home affairs, immigration and asylum, global justice, and equality and human rights.
This debate is not between Eurosceptics and Europhiles but between those who view the future of Europe through a right-wing neo-liberal and federalist framework, and those of us who dare to imagine that another Europe is possible.
Adoption of the Constitution would bind Ireland and other member states into an undemocratic right-wing policy framework for decades. Rejection of the Constitution would reopen the debate about what kind of Europe we want. Sinn Féin agrees with Proinsias when he says that we need to engage with other progressive parties and organisations to shape a social Europe with values and objectives that respect the dignity of human beings, guaranteeing prosperity for Irish people and making a contribution to building a better world. He is wrong in thinking that the proposed EU Constitution provides us with a starting point in that process.
Mary Lou McDonald MEP
Sinn Féin
Seeking asylum, and justice
1. We are asylum seekers who arrived in Ireland as unaccompanied minors – now mainly over 18 years of age and called "aged out" minors. The majority of us have no family members alive in our birth countries and are orphans. All of us applied for asylum because we considered that we had, each of us, a well-founded fear of persecution for the reasons set out in the United Nations Convention on Refugees: we continue to have that fear. We come from countries where gross violations of human rights are common practice and where "to avail of the protection" of our countries of origin under the local legal system is not an option, as that system fails to conform with international human rights standards, is weak and corrupt, or often no longer functions because of endemic violence.
2. We are living in Ireland, some for almost five years, have no criminal records and can show evidence of good conduct and integration in the communities where we reside. The Irish Government provided us with education until we reached 18 years of age. For this we are grateful.
3. We are willing and anxious to work, if allowed, and wish to contribute our education, skills and enthusiasm to the Irish economy. In this way we will repay the investment made in us by the Irish State and Irish people. We wish to remain in Ireland without the fear that drove us here to seek safety. We wish to play our part in building the vibrant Ireland of today and of the future, a multicultural Ireland in a multicultural Europe.
4. The total number of "aged out" asylum seekers who have applied for leave to remain on humanitarian grounds up to 1 January 2005, but not on the basis of an Irish-born child, is relatively small (maximum 500). As young men and women we could have parented an Irish born child during our period of residence in Ireland. The fact that we did not do so was based on our moral convictions, including our desire not to risk the responsibilities of parenthood in our uncertain situation.
5. The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform on 18 December 2004 and subsequently on 14 January 2005 published details of "revised arrangements for the processing of claims for permission to remain from the non-national parents of Irish born children". Many such parents are former asylum seekers. We hope that these revised arrangements imply a development of policy as regards "leave to remain".
6. We ask that the same consideration should be given to the applications made by us (prior to 1st January 2005) for leave to remain on humanitarian grounds. This would mean leave to remain legally in Ireland for two years initially (with permission to work) and, on renewal, extension for a further three years, subject to such conditions as may be made.
7. We urge the Irish authorities to reach positive decisions soon, so that we can end the state of uncertainty in which we have lived for so long. We want to organise our lives for the benefit of ourselves and of this country where we have put down roots, made firm friendships in the Irish commun-ity and have been accepted and integr-ated. We have no remaining family members in our birth countries and, if returned to these countries, we fear for our safety and our future. Please let us stay and build our future here.
Prepared by a group of young asylum seekers in collaboration with Mary King and members of the Dún Laoghaire Refugee Project. Those involved asked to remain anonymous as they fear the possible consequences of their cases being highlighted in the media. Contact: dunlaoghairerefugee@ireland.com
The traditions behind St Patrick's Day
"St Patrick's Pot" or Póta Phádraig was a common term for the alcoholic drink consumed to "drown the shamrock". After a toast to St Patrick, the shamrock was thrown over the shoulder for luck. The 1927 Intoxicating Liquor Act prohibited pubs opening on St Patrick's Day, although this was amended in 1960 allowing for Sunday opening hours.
Excessive drinking on the feast day was previously targeted by the Temperance Movement during the first half of the 19th century, who held parades on the day. While there had previously been marches across Ireland on St Patrick's Day, these decorated temperance processions were the first carnival parades
In the early 1950s, the National Agricultural and Industrial Association, influenced by the large-scale parades abroad, took charge of a parade in Dublin to showcase Irish industry. This parade featured floats from businesses and marching bands. From 1970, the parade was organised by Dublin Tourism until the St Patrick's Day Committee was established in 1995 and a weekend festival was developed.
Thomas Dinely, an Englishman travelling through Ireland in 1681 noted that people of all distinctions wore crosses to commemorate the saint on this day, but noted that only the vulgar, as he called them, wore shamrocks.
In more recent centuries, the crosses were just worn by children while adults wore the sprig of shamrock. These crosses were most often on a circular shaped badge. Those that boys wore generally featured coloured paper to form the cross and decoration.
The girls used fabric and coloured ribbon, often gathering the ribbon to form small rosette decoration on the terminals of the cross.
Boys originally wore theirs on one side of their caps but latterly began to wear them like the girls on their right shoulder. By 1908, brightly coloured silk rosettes with glued-on crosses were for sale on the Dublin streets. The modern rosettes have derived from these children's crosses.
The first flight from Shannon to New York, in March 1952, carried 100,000 pieces of shamrock for the St Patrick's Day celebrations.
The tradition that St Patrick used the shamrock to explain the concept of the Holy Trinity is a relatively late one. It is unlikely that the Irish needed explanation of the concept of three persons in one, as triads were central to pre-Christian Celtic religious tradition.
Clodagh Doyle
Curator, National Museum of Ireland
The Country Life museum is in Turlough, Castlebar, Co Mayo
Housing
Save Tara by moving Phoenix Park to Meath
Forget the engineers' and archaeologists' squabbling over Tara. New road or not, when all those cars reach Blanchardstown each morning, they might as well be walking. So, rather than pedestrianise the Navan Road, I suggest a revolutionary solution which will save Tara-Skryne; end cruel commutes from Meath; halt Dublin's sprawl; keep the prison out of north Dublin; allow people walk to town; and eradicate cars, all at no public cost.
Dublin is dying. Meath and Kildare are drowning in concrete and traffic jams. 20,000 people are queuing for flats at the former Phoenix Park racecourse and Pelletstown, some flogged as being only 18 minutes to town, though the Navan Road is choked and the bare railway service has no more trains. How will they move?
Well, what about this: re-locate the Phoenix Park to Meath.
Yes, in theory, we love the Park. But in reality, how many use it? Consider the evidence. No traffic except at peak times. Vast, sprawling, empty steppes. Roaming herds of stray animals. No shops. And, ridiculously for its size, the park generates almost no money in parking fees.
Now, ponder this. City-centre housing densities are almost 15,000 persons per square kilometre. The Phoenix Park is nine sq km. Therefore, the Park area could comfortably house nearly 150,000 persons. Even keeping some trees. And the new Phoenix Park will be in Co Meath. In the Tara-Skryne Valley. The people who would have been condemned to live in Meath could instead live in new houses built on the Park, and the valley that would have been condemnded to become a motorway for those same commuters could instead become a park.
And it gets better. Áras an Uachtaráin will follow the Park to Tara. The Head of State will be back in the ancestral home of the High Kings of Ireland. Is that not elegant? And the American Ambassador's Residence would make an excellent hotel and golf course.
Other advantages beckon. No need for uproar in North Co Dublin about the relocation of Mountjoy prison. For if the Courts Service is relocating to the Parkgate entrance, would it not then be sensible to relocate Mountjoy into the Park? And at no cost, for we own the land already.
The Park could easily house 100,000 persons, even keeping the green area under Wellington's Monument for recreation. It would still consist of a respectable density, capable of supporting the extension of public transport into the park. As for the monument itself, Dublin now has the Spire, and so is sufficiently well-served on the obelisk front. Would it not make both commercial and poetic sense to return Wellington to his home county of Meath?
So think carefully. Is what we have now the Dublin and Meath that we want? Early out, stew in traffic jams, home late. Ghost-town estates with strangers for neighbours, and schools beyond foot or bike. I think not. Seen that way, surely the Park's current location is an impediment to a better life?
I aim only to revive Dublin and to save, even improve Tara. At present, Tara has visible impact only when seen aerially. But visitors will no longer be underwhelmed, for under my plan the proud spear of the Wellington Monument, re-located to the centre of the Tara rings, will announce the Hill from afar. The Obelisk marking the ancient religion will be twinned by the re-sited Papal Cross atop the Hill of Skyrne across the valley.
The beauty of this re-zoning is that it is entirely cost-free, because we own it already. When the Fifteen Acres rises again in those hallowed hills of Meath, truly will that Park deserve the name of Phoenix!
Alex Brannigan
Dublin
Suicide
Article caused deep hurt
I was shocked to read the article in Village (26 February) by Eithne Earley-Jenkerson entitled "The act of suicide can never be an act of love". Is the writer saying that a person who takes their own life does not love the people they leave behind? On what grounds is she making such a profound statement? Obviously, she has not researched this subject.
I hope Ms Jenkerson will never have to experience losing a loved one through suicide. Will she write then as she has written in this article, "suicide can never be anything but a misguided and utterly utterly selfish act"?
The hurt you have caused by this article to the people who have lost loved ones through suicide is too deep to describe.
EILEEN GEMMELL
Booterstown, Co Dublin
Climate change
Anticipating an arctic Ireland
In a recent column, Ursula Halligan (Village, 19 February) highlighted the irony of the Taoiseach criticising the US over global warming given that Ireland's greenhouse gas pollution is running at double its Kyoto limit. Moreover, the Government has abandoned key elements of its climate change strategy, such as the carbon tax.
Perhaps the Government gets away with this hypocrisy because for most voters such environmental problems seem remote. The rainforest is far away. The rising sea level may take a couple of generations. Compared with the cost of next month's childcare, the problems of our children's children are put on the backburner.
But with dangerous climate change it is different. Children born today will face the consequences of the decisions our generation takes over the next 10 years. If we succumb to resignation or complacency, melting ice may well shut down the Gulf Stream and leave Ireland with a climate like that of northern Canada. "Global Warming" could well mean "Arctic Ireland".
Climate change is no longer only about environmental sustainability, although we are polluting at a rate greater than the Earth's natural systems can absorb. Nor is it simply a question of global justice, although it is the world's poorest and most vulnerable communities which will pay the highest price for the rich world's pollution. Climate change is now also a question of national security for Ireland.
We are not powerless, but the key lesson from the latest research findings is that time is short if we are going to make a difference.
Promoting climate stability must become one of Ireland's key policy goals, accorded the same weight we give peace and prosperity. While the solutions are international, we can only press the US, China and India to pull their weight if we show leadership at home. Our energy, transport and planning policies and practice must become radically more efficient and less polluting. The shift to sustainability will require innovation and adjustment, but it is now clear that business as usual would mean life turned upside down.
Oisín Coghlan
Director, Friends of the Earth, www.foe.ie
Naked Politician
Political connections
I read with interest Katie Hannon's interview with Conor Lenihan (Village, 26 February). Mr Lenihan has always struck me as competent and intelligent, but a dose of humility and common sense would do him no harm. I think he would have to look hard to find someone outside the members of the Oireachtas who would consider TDs to be underpaid.
He would also do well to reflect objectively on how he was able to secure the executive post at ESAT that would have netted him the millions he so casually mentioned. His career was in journalism. Would he really have got this executive post without his political connections?
Matthew Moran
Galway
Global day of protest against Iraq war
Express solidarity next Saturday
Saturday 19 March, the second anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, will see a global day of protest calling for an end to the occupation of both Iraq and Palestine. The US anti-war movement, the European Social Forum and the World Social Forum have called the protest. In Ireland the protest will call also for an end to the use of Shannon by the US military.
Every argument put forward to justify the invasion of Iraq has proven a lie. There were no weapons of mass destruction. The "liberation" of Iraq has turned into a raging conflict between occupation forces and those they claimed to liberate. Hundreds, often thousands, of innocent civilians are killed each month in a bloody conflict that has escalated steadily since the occupation began. A study by a US and Iraqi university estimates 100,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the invasion.
Weeks after the fall of Baghdad US forces began shooting unarmed civilian protesters calling for an end to the occupation and restoration of public services. Thousands were arrested in mass raids and seized at checkpoints. They languish in US jails without charge or legal rights. We have witnessed obscene, widespread and clearly systematic torture of Iraqi prisoners by the US and British forces in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.
The various interim governments installed by the US have established sweeping censorship to silence independent media or publications critical of the occupation. Al-Jazeera TV was bombed, then banned by the US. Opposition newspapers calling for an end to the occupation are raided and destroyed regularly.
Even journalists embedded with US forces have reported a shoot-to-kill policy against Iraqi civilians who get within 50 yards of military vehicles. Billions of dollars earmarked for reconstruction have disappeared without trace. Meanwhile, millions of Iraqis drink water mixed with sewage. Against this background, an insurgency estimated at 5,000-strong in July of 2003 has grown to an estimated 200,000 in January of this year.
The US assault on Fallujah late last year was a war crime. Thousands of civilians and 500 children were slaughtered in the US assault and 60 per cent of homes destroyed. Bodies were left rotting on the streets for weeks. The US placed a cordon around the city to prevent knowledge of the carnage getting out and to give them time to cover up their crimes. The world's media have conspired in a shameful silence about the aftermath of Fallujah. The assault was described as "preparation" for the elections.
The January elections lacked any independent international monitoring to verify turnout, fairness or results. The boycott of the poll in the mostly Sunni Central Provinces was overwhelming. Of Iraqis' living outside Iraq, just over 10 per cent of those eligible voted – though under no threat from insurgents. The Shia list that received most votes campaigned explicitly on the basis of removing the US occupation. Its leadership is now backsliding in the face of a blank US refusal to provide a timetable for withdrawal.
The US claims Iraq was the first step to bring democracy to the Middle East. In reality, US demands for Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon may provoke a civil war and are primarily concerned with installing a pro-Israeli government. No demand is made of Israel to end their illegal occupation of Palestinian territory or the Syrian Golan Heights. The clerical regime in Iran is a haven of democracy and civil rights compared to the US's biggest Arab ally – Saudi Arabia. The real agenda behind the occupation of Iraq is to re-affirm US control of the oil-rich region regardless of the human cost.
The Irish Government has colluded with US criminality and warmongering by allowing 300,000 US troops to travel through Shannon. An unknown number of illegally held detainees have also passed through the airport en route to be tortured in Guantanamo Bay and repressive regimes allied to the US. All this has been done in defiance of the wishes of the majority of the Irish public.
The 19 March global protest is an opportunity for the world to express solidarity with the people of Iraq and the anti-war movement in the US and challenge our Government's complicity with a criminal war and occupation. Opposition to the war and occupation has already forced Spain and other countries to pull out of the US-led coalition. On 19 March, we must renew our efforts in this country, and globally, to finish the job.
Richard Boyd Barrett
Chairperson, Irish Anti-War Movement
The Dublin protest will assemble on Saturday 19 March at 2pm in Parnell Square
Law and Justice
Truth a victim of our legal system
I have always questioned the assertion of successive government ministers that those who voted for Sinn Féin did not vote for a party involved in or connected with criminality. A large section of Sinn Féin did so vote.
How often have we heard of people involved in anti social behaviour being visited by a group of "heavies" following a complaint about them to the local Sinn Féin representative?
So often, people find this is the only effective recourse they have. It is an indictment of our society that such is the case. The result of the recent opinion poll shows no decline in Sinn Féin support in the light of all that has happened in recent weeks.
Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself that this approach of summary justice is fighting crime with crime and would lead inexorably to anarchy.
Furthermore, as we have seen in many court cases, the law bends over backwards to protect the innocent, the natural consequence of which is to protect the guilty. It is these guilty people who know the legal system inside out whereas the innocent are just that; naive innocent victims who discover they are mere observers of the legal system in action and are mesmerised by the process that gets locked in argument on all sorts of issues except that of establishing the truth. Truth and justice are themselves victims of our legal system in so many cases.
Before ever I saw the saying in print I have commented that in our courts "you will get the law, not justice". This is being demonstrated with increasing frequency and something must be done before our courts lose any credibility remaining with them.
FRANK McGOWAN
Bray, Co Wicklow
Environment
Demonisation of Martin Cullen
The continuing demonisation of Minister Cullen for his Farmleigh and e-voting miscalculations and his decency to local supporters should surely be balanced by some mention of the positive side of his endeavours.
What about his valiant defence of smokers' rights and the besieged tobacco industry against the insidious political correctness of Doc Martin's attempt to put healthy behaviour at the heart of health policy?
As for that trivial €60 million on these useless e-voting machines, surely the intention is more important than the outcome. After all, and no commentator seems to credit the fact, a successful installation of these black-box number crunchers might have ensured the eternal reign of Fianna Fáil (see under Florida).
But before he concretes over the royal heights of Tara, and Leinster from sea to shining Shannon, allow me to finish with a suggestion on congestion and that M50 toll trouble.
How many gigabytes would it take to work out a sliding scale toll based on the number of empty seats per vehicle, providing a financial incentive to car pooling at the worst of rush hours? I suggest engine capacity could also be factored in, thus penalising luxury rather than necessity.
Damien Flinter
Clifden,
Co Galway
Policing
Sinn Féin playing us for fools
Vincent Browne, in his Village editorial of 5 March, continues to propound the delusionary proposition that all that is required for the Peace Process impasse to be resolved is for Sinn Féin and the "republican movement [to] acknowledge that only the security forces of the State have any right to exercise force" in the pursuit and maintenance of law and order.
Leaving aside the issue of which "State" of the island he is referring to in that naive cul de sac, and his scandalous assertion that "the rest of us learned that 'mistakes' [such as, for example, the Warrington no-warning bomb, placed in a bin outside a McDonalds restaurant which killed two young boys] were necessary concomitants of the 'war''', Browne is either ignorant or duplicitous in the extreme by suggesting that Sinn Féin and the "republican movement" are open to recognising the PSNI and an Garda Síochana as having the legitimate, sole claim to enforce law and order in the Republic and Northern Ireland.
Widespread intimidation of Catholics, who co-operate with the PSNI and the Policing Boards, is routine in Northern Ireland by members of the "republican movement" seven long years after the Good Friday Agreement.
Far from recent events such as the butchering of Robert McCartney bringing "clarity on criminality", as Browne suggests, massive confusion still exists about whether or not the "republican movement" will abjure all republican criminality in the future or only criminality which is not 'officially' sanctioned by the so-called army council of the PIRA.
The sickening photographs of the five, proud and smiling Sinn Féin TDs with Jerry McCabe's slaughterers' in Castlerea prison and the bloody-minded insistence of Sinn Féin that those killers must be released early from their already massively-reduced sentences; the attempted abduction of Bobby Tohill last year and the non-prosecution of those caught red-handed in the pursuit of that crime, due to evidence being suppressed by "republicans" – there is no evidence whatever, that Sinn Féin or the "republican movement" has even climbed the first rung of the ladder that would see them recognise the PSNI/Garda as the legitimate guardians of either of the states of this island, never mind them being close to recognising that it is they, and they alone, who are out of step in not recognising and accepting the PSNI and all the institutions of both states of this island as set out in the Good Friday Agreement.
Speech after belligerent speech by a succession of Sinn Féin politicians at their ardfheis in Dublin last weekend proves that the party is either playing us all for fools or they are continuing to programme, in cult-like fashion, their supporters and gullible would-be voters into believing that everyone is out of step but the "republican movement" and Sinn Féin.
The subtext of the tutelage of Sinn Féin by the many fans of that political party in the Republic's media is the approval of the un-rehearsed, hard-left economic stance of Sinn Féin by the largely-socialist media cohort in this State.
This stance, if implemented in Government, would return this island to the stagnant outreaches of such communist states as North Korea and Cuba.
EOIN McMAHON
Dublin