Villagers: Letters to the editor 2006-08-17
I have some modest proposals for Dáil reform. In future, if a TD is absent from their Dáil seat, a blow-up sex doll should be placed in their empty seat with the name of the absent TD displayed on the doll. As the TV cameras span across the possible circus of inflatable TDs this should insure the debating chamber will be full in future.
Also, with regard to pay rises, since the government is fond of attaching referenda to various elections, would it be possible to attach a permanent question to every election: "Do you think the deputies deserve a pay rise for the next five years."
Finally, party political conferences should be pay-for-view so only the wealthy benefactors of our poilitical parties can see if their lads and lassies are worth the money they donate to them.
JOHN HANAMY, Milltown Road, Dublin 6
Cancelled bus service: Bus Éireann cancellation was 'cynical'
I live in Wicklow town and have been able to get employment in Sandyford industrial estate for one reason: I can get take the bus service from Wicklow town to the Luas in Sandyford, well at least I was up until Friday 11 August. As I got on the bus on Wednesday morning (9 August) it was announced that the service was ceasing as from Friday and that the bus drivers would also be losing their jobs. This means all the people who have come to rely on this service had to find alternative transport within four days or give up their jobs.
I am hoping you will help me try and highlight the predicament all of us who avail of this service now find our selves in and perhaps you might investigate why this excellent community service has been ceased, especially with the so-called government focus on getting more people to use public transport and hence ease the traffic congestion.
It is obviously a cynical decision by Bus Éireann to cease the service this week given the fact this is the quietest time of the year with holidays and that they feel they would get little or no opposition until it is to late.
Grainne Newel, Wicklow
1916 to 1923: Rhetoric is far from 'objective'
Pierce Martin (Village 16 August) states that only through dispassionate forensic analysis can we arrive at an objective understanding of history. Yet his subjectivity seeps through with phrases like "bloodcurdling rhetoric" and "wholesale slaughter".
His assertion that Ireland was at peace prior to the 1916 Rising is untrue. As part of the UK it was officially at war with Germany. The country was on a war footing, egged on to "wholesale slaughter" in France by the "bloodcurdling rhetoric" of John Redmond and "fanatical" British Army recruiters.
Pierce repeats the old canard that the 1918 election was "compromised". I assume he is referring to the notion that opposition candidates were intimidated and Sinn Féin had a clear field. Actually SF had to operate under police harassment, with members in jail and in an atmosphere of suppression by the British authorities. Still, they won a substantial portion of the votes polled in most areas where the seat was contested.
By Pierce's criteria, the 47 per cent of the contested vote he states wasn't sufficient to give them a mandate would eliminate most democratic governments in the West from exercising power.
The first Dáil's purpose was to give effect to its mandate to act as the government of an independent Ireland, not as a Home Rule parliament within the UK. Thus it embodied the will of the majority of the Irish.
Pierce writes that it took the British a year to respond to the "wholesale slaughter" of the RIC and civilians during "the second civil war". I am not sure to which second civil war he is referring. My guess is the period from 1917 to 1920. Prior to 1919 the Irish Volunteers/IRA was largely on the defensive and evading arrest. The RIC were roughed up and threatened when the IVF had the chance, but killing did not really start until Soloheadbeg in 1919. The IRA killed 15 RIC men that year: though tragic, hardly wholesale slaughter. Unlike their UK counterparts, the RIC was well-armed and not at all afraid to shoot back with lethal effect.
Nick Folley, Carrigaline, Co Cork
Delays in infrastructure: Inclusive planning is the answer
Ireland's recent social history has been characterised by a series of environmentally-based community challenges to multinational plants or infrastructural projects, such as the current Shell to Sea campaign in Mayo. These community responses are formulated from a
populist rural sentiment or localised sense of place, which has been mobilised over the decades in which Ireland has undergone a dramatic transformation from a primarily agrarian and rural society to that of an industrialised economy obsessed by rapid growth and development.
In my latest book Green Nation: Irish Environmentalism from Carnsore Point to the Rossport Five, I have examined a number of the community-based campaigns that have come to make up a grassroots environmental movement in a changing Ireland. Starting with the 'No Nukes' protests at Carnsore in the late 1970s and early 1980s, it is possible to trace the emergence of a populist movement which could have been avoided with a more inclusive consultation process at the planning stage. This inclusiveness would enhance local democracy while reducing delays in infrastructure, to the benefit of all.
Liam Leonard, Dept Sociology & Politics, NUI Galway
Irish and the Revenue: Revenue does not discriminate
Eoin Ó Murchú ('Give Irish its deserved legal status', 10-16 August) makes the following comment: "The Revenue Commissioners, for example,who are so perturbed by the cost of making documents and services available in Irish, have no trouble doing so in Polish. I have no objection to Polish speakers having their rights, but what about my rights in my own country?"
It's hard to know where to begin to correct the errors in these two sentences. In recent times we have provided some facilities to Polish taxpayers and others for whom English (or Irish) is not their first language.
It is not possible to provide a full service in their native language but we feel it is important that they should be provided with some assistance in their business dealings with us.
This initiative has no impact on our service to taxpayers who wish to do business with us through the Irish language. Taxpayers who wish to have their affairs dealt with entirely through the Irish language are able to do so.
Providing some language services to Polish (and Czech, German, Spanish, French, Lithuanian, Portuguese, Slovakian, Russian and Chinese) taxpayers is something which most people recognise as a welcome development.
Any suggestion that Irish citizens are suffering discrimination because we are making an effort to assist these immigrants is simply not true.
Dave Coleman, Senior Press Officer, Revenue Commissioners, Dublin Castle, Dublin 2
Statement: Calls for immigrant ministry
Since its establishment, the Immigrant Council of Ireland (ICI) has called for a cross-departmental mechanism to increase coordination and coherence around immigration. So we welcome the news that the government is seriously contemplating the introduction of such a cross-departmental political structure and look forward to further concrete announcements as to how it will function.
However, unless a minister with specific responsibility for immigration and integration issues is appointed to proactively drive this structure, real change is unlikely to take place. Several Irish government departments have a brief in relation to immigration and social inclusion policies. Each department is therefore responsible for deciding which of its benefits and services be made available to different categories of migrants.
For years, those of us who have advocated children's rights campaigned for a Minister for Children and it wasn't until this ministry was established that real progress took place in this area.
It is crucial that those most affected by the work of this immigration minister and his/her office be involved in developing and planning strategies as well as decision-making at a national and local level. This should include migrants and ethnic minorities in particular, as well as the receiving community, social partners, non-governmental organisations and other stakeholders.
Immigrant Council of Ireland
Fox-cub hunting: Cub hunting amounts to animal abuse
As the spectre of swamp fewer threatens the Irish horse industry, the reaction of the Irish hunting community is to start the foxcub hunting season. Over the next three months, mounted riders will be in the countryside blooding foxhounds and harrier with young fox cubs. This aspect of foxhunting is hidden with very good reason.
Cub hunting is the bloody training ground for new hounds coming into the pack and for older hounds to rekindle their interest in hunting foxes. The huntsman's intention is to gel the hounds in a single killing unit, ready and able to do his or her bidding on the hunting day.
Hounds are guided by the huntsman to scent, hunt down and kill foxes. The more foxes the hounds kill, the more they understand their role.
Hounds must know that their sole purpose in the pack is to hunt down and kill foxes. Hounds that fail to find a role in the pack are put down without any thought given to the fact that they are fit and healthy.
After months of hunting down and killing fox cubs, hounds are ready for a demanding hunting season.
There is no respite for hounds even at the end of a hunting season. Healthy hunting hounds with a couple of seasons under their paws trot their way to a premature death to make way for new additions to the pack.
The fact that these people can engage in animal abuse legally proves the point that if you are given a licence to kill it is going to release many an evil.
John Tierney, The Association of Hunt Saboteurs, Dublin 1
Western rhetoric: Crimes of the West are just as monstrous
The rhetoric of Great Britain and the USA always amazes me. This week a "monstrous crime" to blow up planes with "innocent civilian, women and children" by those "Islamic fascists" has been thwarted. This news item was followed by scenes of Lebanon being bombed by Israeli planes, where more than 1,000 people have been killed, mostly civilians, women and children. I guess I am to conclude that is it OK to kill innocent civilians as long as they are not from white Western countries. As long as the destruction and death originates from military machinery, it is justified.
We would do well to realise how monstrous our own crimes are against the Islamic world.
Catherine Cunningham, Loughglynn, Roscommon
Laytown schools crisis: Our children deserve an education
On 9 August, at a meeting called by Mary Wallace, Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, sitting TD for Meath East, more than 200 parents of children enrolled and accepted by Scoil Oilibhéir Naofa, Laytown, were treated so shoddily it made my blood boil. Not only were they informed their children had to start their education at Bellewstown Racecourse, a facility is over 100 years old, but that they were to be bussed to and from Bellewstown (a 12-mile journey) by a Department of Education Bus. I cannot even begin to contemplate who in the Department of Education thinks its is acceptable to put four-year-olds on a bus, without seat belts, to make their journey to start school. Yet a statement issued by the department stated that Laytown is a Priority 1 case and everything is being done to look after them. They still have no school and even worse they still have no answers.
What ensued at the 9 August meeting was a shambles. Not one question was answered by either Monsignor Hanly, Mary Carpenter (school headteacher) or Mary Wallace, who apparently forgot she was there as a representative of the Department of Education.
When I was chosen to run for Fine Gael as their candidate at the next general election I never though that Education would rank so high on my list of election issues. Since 19 May, I have had nothing but education issues to deal with.
It is sad that, with such a prosperous economy and a government who keep telling us they are responsible for that prosperity, we cannot offer our children the education to which they have a constitutional right.
Regina Doherty, Fine Gael, Meath East