Letters to the Editor 2005-07-01

HUNTING

The National Association of Regional Game Councils (NARGC), who represent a fraction of Ireland's live shooting community, are still hopping mad at the decision of the former Minister for the Environment, Martin Cullen, to keep live shooting out of our national parks. Ireland's live shooting community try to portray themselves as conservationists and caretakers of the countryside. They fail to notice that they are responsible for the massive amount of slaughter inflicted on Irish wildlife each year. To allow gunmen onto State lands would be an act of destruction against our national heritage. National Parks are meant to be a place of peace and quiet as we absorb the sheer beauty of wildlife in all its forms. The arrival of people shooting would destroy this harmony.

The real reason behind NARGC's attempt to gain access to State lands is to obtain more shooting territory to allow gunmen to kill more wildlife. It must be borne in mind that NARGC represents only a fraction of Ireland's live shooting community.

If one shooting organisation gets its odious gun print onto State land, other individual shooters, who are not members of NARGC, will demand the same right of access to State lands. Following on, other hunting groups like fox hunters, hare hunters will also clamour for the right to hunt on State lands.

Given that legal and illegal hunting are entwined in Ireland one can only imagine what types of animal hunting would take place on State lands. There is a well-documented history of gun club members involved in the darker side of blood-sports like badger baiting.

To quote the words of a Circuit Judge in 1998 dealing with an appeal case involving badger hunting by two men: "the message can go out loud and clear to all gun club members, that this type of incident won't be tolerated. One of you [the defendant] is secretary of your local gun club and perhaps when they see you both lost your gun licence for five year, they'll get the hint."

Given this background, the Action of Hunt Saboteurs (AOHS) hopes that the current Minister for the Environment, Dick Roche, will continue the policy to keep shooters out of state lands and to maintain national parks as wildlife killing free areas.

To allow these people into national parks would be a major step backwards for wildlife and its conservation in Ireland. There is much truth in the view that the ethos of the NARGC is anti-wildlife, anti-countryside and anti-social.

Live game shooters and their fellow animal abusers should be kept off State lands for the sake of genuine wildlife conservation.

John Tierney

Campaigns Director, Association of Hunt Saboteurs, Dublin 1

G8 SUMMIT

The greatest protest in recent years was on 15 February 2003, when millions of people took to the streets of cities the world over in protest at the invasion of Iraq. As these protestors were only those who could be physically present at a demonstration, they represented a fraction of those sympathetic to their concerns. They were the tip of an iceberg. And one would have imagined that, like an iceberg, this mass movement would exert such a force on those willing to invade Iraq that it would sink their ambitions. But it was not to be.

For those of us living in ostensibly democratic countries these are strange times. We have leaders none of us follow. We have freedom of speech, but no one will listen. We may live where we like, if we could but afford it. We have the freedom to buy things that are too expensive to purchase. We even have the freedom to think, so long as it is within prescribed parameters laid down for us.

What does this tell us about our free world? If we can do as we please, but nothing we do has any effect, what kind of life are we living? Since 2001, a war in Afghanistan and Iraq has been carried out against the express wishes of the world's population. Polls taken by Gallup International prior to each phase of the war demonstrate this vividly. Prior to the invasion of Afghanistan, Europeans were overwhelmingly opposed, with support for the war ranging from 8 per cent in Greece to 29 per cent in France. In South America, support for the war was even lower with a mere 11 per cent in favour in Colombia and Venezuela, with Mexico least inclined with 2 per cent support.

Prior to the invasion of Iraq, the Gallup Poll showed that not one European country favoured war, with the EU average being 11 per cent in favour. Even amongst the 'New Europe' states in the 'coalition of the willing' support was low: from 4 per cent in Macedonia to 11 per cent in Romania. In Turkey, an applicant for EU membership, 90 per cent of the population opposed the war. Yet it went ahead.

In Ireland, we too protested the war. Here, specific ire was directed against the government's requisitioning of Shannon airport as an American airbase; a stop-off point for troops being flown from the USA to Afghanistan and Iraq. At the time, the protest was concerned with a supposedly neutral country, as Ireland purported to be, aiding and abetting a foreign war machine in a war that the UN would ultimately – one year after the fact – term 'illegal'. The immorality of the killings remains an unspoken.

Since 15 February 2003, it has come to light that the war is underpinned with a barbarity few attempt to justify. In Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and Camp Breadbasket, prisoners are subjected to base and humiliating acts of torture.

By cooperating with the agents of this brutality, the Irish government has become forever tarnished; and with it the Irish people they democratically represent. When Margaret Hassan and Kenneth Bigley were kidnapped, would attempting to establish them as Irish citizens rather than as British subjects really have altered their captor's attitude towards them in light of Ireland's de facto membership of the 'coalition of the willing'?

The global protest movement against the war and its attendant ills, such as the atrocities described above, is a popular voice that is being ignored by ostensibly democratic governments. What can this tell us other than that such governments not only have no respect for those who will perish as a result of their actions, but that they have no respect for their own electorate as well.

The upcoming protest at the G8 summit should be seen as representative of the true schism in the world today. It is not the one prescribed for us between Islam and the West, but that between those in power and those millions whom they attempt to manipulate and control, or failing which, ignore.

If we, like the demonstrators, truly value freedom and democracy, should we not question those who proclaim to be its defenders but who behave as though the wishes of their electorate are not worth listening to? Is it not time for us to stop fooling ourselves and admit that we are just as unimportant to the world's powerful few as those who have perished in Iraq and Afghanistan since 15 February 2003?

Pól MacReannacháin

Tyrone

PRIVATISATION

In her report on the pitfalls of privatising public services (Village, 17 June), Hilary Curley makes selective use of quotations.

In my conversation with her, what I said, in relation to vending machines, was "the canteen operates a policy on healthy eating which seems to be contradicted by the presence of vending machines, they should not be in the school".

I also pointed out that I, as Principal, was very satisfied with the service and maintenance provided and that as a result my workload was considerably reduced in this area.

With regard to the purported cost overruns, what I said was "the idea seems to have come under a certain amount of criticism from Comptroller & Auditor General and the Public Accounts Committee but, that to my knowledge, none of the schools concerned have ever been visited by a representative of these bodies to view the product for themselves. They seem to know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. One thing is for sure these buildings will not have to be demolished in 20 years as has happened in the past under the traditional procurement system".

Willie Ruane

Sligo

GARDA SIOCHANA

Surely the Garda Commissioner must have learned something from the woes of the Catholic Church, that set up a Pedophile Protection Program to shuffle corrupt clergy from parish to parish.

Now it appears that the Garda Commissioner (with the nod of McDowell) is embarking on the same enterprise that brought the church into moral decline by shuffling gardaí (see Morris report) through to Dublin precincts. 

Am I the only other person who has seen the parallels?

Would an O'Loan-type Ombudsman destroy political patronage and

personal political power of those with their grip on the power levers? 

"Ireland my first and only love

Where Christ and Caesar works hand in glove"

If proof was ever needed ... the sad connection.

Maurice McTiernan

California

EU TREATY

Precisely because electorates, (and certainly Villagers!), are not all or always stupid, the EU Constitutional Treaty deserves better than Eoin Ó Murchú's glib goodbye (Village 24th-30th June 2005).

The results of referenda derive from an amalgam of quite varied and often contradictory ad hoc coalitions and topical factors. In our Nice 1 experience, 65 per cent of the registered electorate did not vote at all.

Allowing for those who never vote or were unable to do so in person because they were dead, evidence suggests that at least HALF the registered electorate on that particular day did not know, did not understand or did not care. A second fact about Nice 1 is that the No vote had actually declined from 20 per cent (of the registered electorate) on Maastricht to 18 per cent – but was enough to swing it on a 35 per cent turnout. Of course this 18 per cent is only half of the 36 per cent, (of those who voted), in the British General Election for Tony Blair and gave him his third mandate. (It is possible that half of that 36 per cent thought they were voting for a Gordon Brown succession.)

In trying accurately to interpret votes, we need to tread with great care. (In the British case, allowing for British eccentricities, a solid 64 per cent of those who voted, voted for somebody else other than Tony Blair to be residing in 10 Downing Street.)

We simply do not know, pending local versions of Richard Synott's masterly analysis of Irish Nice 1, why the voters, (not one big homogeneous chunky ELECTORATE), voted the way they did in France and the Netherlands. Turkey, though it had nothing to do with the Constitutional Treaty, certainly was a major factor. Turkey was seen as the stalking horse for the spectre of militant Islam – and low wage job-stealers. Not a single arrondissement in Paris, (arguably a politically sophisticated conurbation), voted 'No'. Rural and subrural France did vote 'No'.

To protect the CAP and French holidays against what was perceived as an unholy alliance of economically liberal Chirac and economically liberal Blair to demolish the 'European social model'? To defend God – who is not allowed to be mentioned in French schools?

In Amsterdam, vote 'No' to defend cannabis? To eliminate cannabis?

Probably the only thing that we can assert with any certainty is that a very large number of voters in both countries wanted to 'have a go' at their Governments – and had no other mid-term way of doing so. If there were a Referendum on the Constitutional Treaty in Ireland this month, a number of voters would vote 'No' because of experiences in A&E.

Many farmers would vote 'No' because, contrary to what Mr. Blair believes, they think that the CAP is NOT featherbedding them and that Brussels has betrayed them.

God also still has some friends in Ireland.None of this is to assert that the advocates of the 'European project' do not have a serious communication problem. They do. However, part of the problem is ironically related to the acceptable part of what Mr Tony 36 per cent Blair has been saying: If Europe is to look after its peoples effectively, it must modernise. This paradoxically is precisely what the actual contents of the Constitutional Treaty are about. (Just as a PS: If the presumably ultra-democratic an tUas Ó Murchú is so passionate about TWO countries representing about 80 million people voting 'No', why does he not even mention the fact that TEN countries representing 220 million people have already ratified 'Yes' – using their own national, sovereign methods of ratification?)

Maurice O'Connell

Tralee, Co Kerry

WOMEN IN POLITICS

Hilary Curley's article bemoans the fact that there are only 22 women in the Dáil. Having looked at the subject of women's under-representation in the Oireachtas as part of a course I was doing, I reached the following conclusion. Achieving better women's representation requires the introduction by political parties of a voluntary minimum quota of 30 to 50 per cent of candidates. These women candidates in turn need support at election time, especially from women themselves. At the moment 51 per cent of the electorate is represented by just 13 per cent of the public representatives. That seems unjust. Women do, however, have majority on polling day.

A Leavy

Dublin 13

HARRY BROWNE ON BONO

I wish to take grave exception to the tone and language used by Harry Browne in Village (Issue 38).

Surely, the main point is that Bono and Bob Geldof are trying to improve the situation and to focus global attention on the African plight. They are aware of the limitations of their efforts pertaining to debt relief.

Obviously, it will take a lot of effort to change Browne's mindset who prefers to belittle them with distasteful and snide language, under the guise of his cynical little column.

Is he advocating that we all stand by and do absolutely nothing? How little the world and Africa needs Harry Browne's negativity.

Paul Gallagher

Dun Laoghaire