Villagers: Letters to the Editor 2006-06-15

The driving testers are not the best people to come up with a solution to the driving-test problems – as one of Orla Barry's listeners on Today FM suggested – because the testers have a selfish, monopolist mindset, which rejects any competition against them.

What they need is a dose of the Ryanair syndrome, which brought Aer Lingus to its senses.

How dare they demand that no competition be allowed against them? What gives them the notion that they are above being competed with?

And there should certainly not be any more agreements signed by the government which forbid competition against them.

Gaybo should insist on this.

Bertie would want to stop poking private sector workers in the eye, by featherbedding the state workers, using taxes that are mainly paid by the private sector to do so, when the private-sector workers do not have the pensions and security of tenure that the state workers enjoy.

Instead of benchmarking, which is an affront to the private-sector workers, the wages and salaries of state workers should only be increased if the required number of workers in any particular sector is falling and pay should then be increased gradually until the required number has been reached; and not increased again till numbers once more start to fall and so on.

It is time that the public sector had to live with the laws of supply and demand, in the same way that private sector workers have always had to do.

Sfp O'Sullivan, Dundrum, Dublin 14

Maggie Kenneally - Kenneally for idiot of the week

Further to Coilin MacLochlainn's letter of 27 April 2006, I would like to second his nomination of Maggie Kenneally as idiot of the week. In her radio column in Village magazine (1-7 June) she referred to 14 hours of sport a week on RTÉ Radio 1. Does Village magazine not value research and factual analysis in its articles and reviews? Had Maggie Kenneally conducted rudimentary research on the new Radio 1 schedule, she would have seen the error of her "14 hours of sport a week on the air" statement. At various different times of the year, there are between 6 and 8 hours of sport on at the weekend. The new daily sports show with Des Cahill will take up a further two-and-a-half-hours of airtime during the week. I presume your radio reviewer didn't bother to peruse the new Radio 1 schedule, which no longer contains Sportscall or the Round Midnight sports program on Thursday nights.

Perhaps, in her next article, she could could also put her remarks about the audience figures for weekend sports shows (Village 1-7 June) into context. Over 120,000 people listen to the Saturday and Sunday sport shows on RTÉ; around 100,000 listen to the Premiership Live show on Today FM, which I'm sure constitutes a fairly hefty share of the available audience at that time.

Over the past few weeks, I have found her analysis to be poorly judged and backed up with facts and figures that she seems to make up to suit her points. The rest of your magazine is hugely enjoyable (numerous spelling and subediting mistakes notwithstanding). Why then do we have to suffer such a poor reviewer of such an important medium?

CLAUDE MEGALOPOLIS

Decriminalisation of drugs - CJH must have known about tapping

I enjoyed reading your interview with Catherine Butler and I am, and have been, a great admirer of Charles Haughey and he will be remembered for his contribution to our State long after the present incumbents are dust. I also liked and held Sean Doherty in high esteem and do not believe that Charles Haughey could have been unaware of the phone-tapping affair – this and the sacking of the wonderful Brian Lenihan show the flaws in us all!

Keith Nolan, Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim

Decriminalisation of drugs -  Liberal laws can work with intervention

Your editorial "we favour the decriminalisation of illicit drugs and the management of the drugs problem by social and medical means" is a distillation of the case I have been making on this issue for years. The question arises as to how this could be done because there is evidence from Holland and Switzerland that drug tourism becomes a problem when the policy on drug-taking in one area is significantly more adult and liberal than in another. Social problems are plentiful in areas with heroin-use problems in particular.

Education, training, parenting courses, counselling and jobs are part of the answer. There are other problems such as the behavioural consequences of personality and psychiatric disorders which are not easily tackled. Your prescription is worthy but will not address many of the problems.

I am not sure if terrorising neighbours, chucking bricks through windows, and verbal and physical abuse of vulnerable children is petty criminality, but intermediate to longterm solutions to crime are worthy but do nothing to address the here and now. That is why I have advocated a system of progressive intervention in the worst cases which could end in removal to a controlled area where a security curfew and social, family and eduational intervention could be instituted. This would only happen in cases where parents as well as children are deeply involved in chaotic behaviour.

I do not favour ASBOs which are open to abuse and a court procedure must be put in place before anyone can be coralled into a restricted housing regime. People living in working class areas are entitled to a life now not in ten years when social intervention may begin to work.

Bill Tormey, Dublin City Councillor (FG)

Dublin Bus - Chaos on O'Connell St

I wish to protest about the chaotic and shambolic way that Bus Átha Cliath introduced the final relocation of the bus stops on O'Connell Street on Friday afternoon, 9 June – with literally minutes notice to passengers and drivers. There was no advance warning, causing considerable confusion to passengers and drivers. Even the bus drivers only found out on Friday afternoon – after the bus stops had been relocated! Bus Atha Cliath, owe both the passengers and the drivers and their unions an immediate public apology for all the distress and inconvenience caused, and a guarantee it won't happen again.

Paul Kinsella, Santry, Dublin 9

School conditions - Proper school needed in Clondalkin

In 1993 Gaelscoil na Camóige (primary school) was set up in Clondalkin in pre-fab huts. These huts, due to the dedication of the school's staff, have lasted 13 years. In 2006 we had over 222 children enrolled in the school; it has one toilet for the entire school. On Tuesday 6 June my child (aged 7) fainted due to the heat in these huts. Is this good enough? There have been ongoing between the OPW and the landowners for the last 5 to 7 years, with the OPW offering paltry sums with no commercial basis. I wrote to the minister last week with no answer. I am now asking the minister publicly to state when we are going to have a proper school?

Pol Ó Deoráin, Cluain Dolcáin, BÁC 22

Ecological disaster - Mining will contaminate Chile's rivers

In the Valle de San Felix, the purest water in Chile runs from two rivers, fed by two glaciers. Indigenous farmers use the water, there is no unemployment, and they provide the second largest source of income for the area.

Under the glaciers a huge deposit of gold, silver and other minerals has been found. To get at these, it would be necessary to break, to destroy the glaciers and to make two huge holes, each as big as a mountain, one for extraction and one for the mine's rubbish.

The project is called Pascua Lama. The company is called Barrick Gold (Canadian). The operation is planned by a multinational company, one of whose members is George Bush Snr. The Chilean Government has approved the project to start this year. The only reason it hasn't started yet is because the farmers have got a temporary stay of execution. If they destroy the glaciers, they will not just destroy the source of especially pure water, but they will permanently contaminate the two rivers so they will never again be fit for human or animal consumption because of the use of cyanide and sulphuric acid in the extraction process.

Every last gram of gold will go abroad to the multinational company and not one will be left with the people whose land it is. They will only be left with the poisoned water and the resulting illnesses.

The farmers have been fighting a long time for their land, but have been forbidden to make a TV appeal by a ban from the Ministry of the Interior. Their only hope now of putting brakes on this project is to get help from international justice.

Eamon Jordan, Crolly, Co. Donegal

STATEMENT - Harney's for-profit hospitals won't work

Nurses from across the country will be heading to Croke Park on Wednesday 14 June for a rally over pay and conditions. The nurses demand a 35-hour week and a pay rise. We believe it is important the public show their support for the nurses' action.

Mary Harney and others will undoubtedly argue that a pay rise for nurses will divert money from the health services. However, ensuring staff have proper conditions is essential to ensure we have a world-class health service. There should be no contradiction between supporting pay and conditions for nurses and improving health care.

Implementation of the nurses' demands for a 35-hour week and pay rise are vital to retain nurses and keep standards of care at a safe level. In fact, many nurses are not even on the average industrial wage and the Labour Court, as far back as 1980, has said that because of the nature of work and the stressful environment in which it is performed, nurses and midwives should benefit from a reduced working week.

The crisis in the health service comes as a result of neo-liberal 'for-profit' policies pursued by the current government. Their policy since 2001, The Health Strategy, is to put back 3,000 public hospital beds, but now these will be private beds in for-profit hospitals run by multinationals eg the American multinational Triad will run the new Beacon Clinic in Sandyford in Dublin.

Mary Harney argues that for-profit beds are cheaper and more effective. This is a lie. Firstly for-profit hospitals will be given massive state handouts of billions in tax-breaks and public land and will not give full services, only cherrypicking straightforward elective surgical cases. Secondly, in the USA, more than $1 in every $3 in for-profit hospitals goes on bureaucracy or profits. As a result, the USA has the worst value for money in the world with the health status of American citizens ranked in the thirties while health spending ranks number one!

Why would Mary Harney lie? Why refuse to fund public beds and solve the trolley crisis? This is because profit comes first, not health, in the economic model Harney follows, called 'neoliberalism'. Private instead of public means more profit. Insurance instead of tax, means more profits. Fees rather than salaries means more profit. Both mean more bureaucracy too.

Immediate funding for better health centres, proper pay and conditions for nurses and more hospital and nursing-home beds and staff would solve the crisis within months. As long as neoliberals like Harney or Ahern are in charge of the health service, profit will be put before people.

It will take mass demonstrations of young and old, patients and health workers, like those seen recently in France, to turn around these policies and kick the profiteers out of the health service once and for all. Groups and unions who want such change should work together for this.

? More People Before Profit Alliance; www.people-before-profit-org or people_beforeprofit @yahoo.ie. Contact Rory Hearne at 086 1523542