Sir, –In Carl O’Brien’s article in Monday’s edition (Leaving Cert reforms to be delayed in two key subjects), he reports on the decision to delay the introduction of new subject specifications for Senior Cycle English and Accounting, after “education authorities acknowledged that more time is needed to prepare for the changes”, specifically in the planning for the Additional Assessment Components (AACs) in those subjects.
I think this is prudent from the Department of Education and the Minister, as it is imperative that every effort is made to build solid foundations for a successful reform of the Leaving Certificate.
However, it is disappointing that the same good judgment isn’t being applied as schools prepare for the introduction of complex AACs in Leaving Cert Biology, Chemistry and Physics, being introduced into our schools this September.
There are arguably far greater logistical and equity issues with their introduction; namely, a lack of school laboratories in schools (including many disadvantaged schools), a lack of specialist scientific equipment in those labs, no updated laboratory safety guidance or (long promised) guidelines on artificial intelligence.
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While the Department of Education have announced additional funding for science in schools, the chemical supply companies are struggling to meet demand for updated equipment and there is no mechanism for schools to upgrade or expand their existing laboratory provision until the summer of 2026.
Despite these issues, which have been brought to the Minister’s attention by the teaching unions, the Irish Science Teachers’ Association (82 per cent of their members say their schools are not equipped to facilitate these assessments), leading educationalists like Áine Hyland, your own columnists (including Breda O’Brien) and even within the NCCA’s Subject Development Groups, they have been consistently ignored.
The ISTA’s sensible proposal to delay the AACs in those subjects – to provide the necessary time to address these challenges – have fallen on deaf ears; the ISTA proposal would still see the new subject curriculums in schools in September.
While it’s assuring to see common sense prevail with the decision to delay the introduction of English and Accounting, one hopes there is more common sense to go around and a judicious delay on the AACs in the senior sciences is also considered strongly. – Yours, etc,
HUMPHREY JONES,
Chairperson,
Irish Science Teachers’
Association
Dublin 16
Mother’s nature
Like Bríd Miller (Letters May 26th), I very much enjoy Brianna Parkins’s columns. I too had a mother who had views on clothes. On seeing an outfit which she did not like she would say “Is that the fashion?”.
Quite daunting! – Yours, etc.
ANNE DOHERTY,
Dublin 7
Planning and wind energy
Sir, – Kevin O’Sullivan’s article (‘Wind Energy Ireland warns immediate Government action needed ‘to protect’ offshore wind ‘opportunity’’ May 27th) points to increasing pressure on the Government to accelerate offshore wind development.
While the need for progress is clear, proposals to streamline the planning process raise valid concerns. An Bord Pleanála plays a key role in ensuring that large-scale projects are properly assessed, and that scrutiny must be maintained to ensure fair and accountable decision making.
In response to recent planning applications, the Board issued extensive requests for further information on east-coast projects including marine mammal disturbance, migratory bird routes, underwater noise, sediment transport, and the impact on tourism assets.
Similar information requests probe cumulative environmental effects, commercial-fisheries safeguards, subsea-cable routing and onshore traffic management.
The developments in question are often proposed in ecologically sensitive nearshore areas which require careful and informed assessment. Even a well-resourced planning authority will typically need multiple rounds of detailed information to fully understand the potential effects on marine ecosystems before any decision can be made. This is a necessary part of a responsible and transparent planning process.
It is surprising for industry spokespeople to suggest that such concerns should have been entirely resolved at “pre-planning” stage. Modern offshore projects span hundreds of square kilometres and involve turbines over 300 metres tall.
Fast-tracking or bypassing such an important democratic safeguard risks undermining the planning system that protects biodiversity and heritage and ensures compliance with European environmental law.
Since the Arklow Bank turbines were built almost 25 years ago, our offshore ambitions have repeatedly stalled. The shared failure of government and industry to deliver substantial new capacity should prompt sober reflection, not finger-pointing.
The wind lobby would do well to acknowledge the reasons behind the volume of further information requests and public objections to these offshore projects, rather than viewing them as obstacles.
The Government must resist pressure to override proper planning procedures in pursuit of short-term targets. Only through a transparent, evidence-based process that respects ecosystems, communities and established planning norms can Ireland meet its 2030 renewables and climate commitments. – Yours, etc
MICHAEL O’MEARA,
Fenor,
Co Waterford.
The cycle continues
Sir, – I am not anti cyclists per se, but I have a big problem with a large majority of them who think a red traffic light entitles them to continue cycling. I very seldom see a cyclist stop at a red light/pedestrian crossing.
I have pedestrian lights outside my gate and have never seen a cyclist stop on red.
Also, why is there no law enforcing people to wear a helmet and a reflective band of some sort?
I simply do not understand anybody getting on a bike without a helmet. – Yours, etc,
LAURA O’MARA,
Stillorgan,
Co Dublin.
Sir, – As a cyclist in Dublin for several decades, I can identify with Joe Humphrey’s article. I too have impure thoughts as I glide by immobile cars, stuck yet again, in a traffic jam. I am also convinced that it is the supreme way to travel, especially in a city.
Of all the drivers in Dublin city, my greatest respect and admiration goes to bus drivers.
When, by necessity, I am in a bus lane and know there is a bus behind me that is unable to pass me, the driver has never honked at me to get out of the way. Obviously, not choosing to be right in front of a bus, I do get out of the way when I can.
Even with such a large vehicle, bus drivers are never threatening to me as a cyclist, and observe the rules of the road in signalling and pulling out.
Would that all road users would follow their good example and show likewise tolerance for each other.
In conclusion, I often think of the line from “Oklahoma”
“The cowboy and the farmer can be friends.” – Yours , etc,
KATHLEEN FORDE,
Whitehall,
Dublin 9.
Some bus service
Sir, – I flagged down a bus from Malaga to the famous caves of Tesoro. My bus card was the wrong type. A young couple offered to let me use theirs for free. An elderly lady did also. Even the bus driver said it was ok to come on board. Not one spoke a word of English. I wonder what the Spanish phrase for “blown away” is? –Yours, etc
DAVID CURRAN,
Knocknacarra,
Co Galway.
High definition
Sir, – Your article (Irish revolutionary Madeleine ffrench-Mullen to be honoured with plaque at childhood home, May 24th) states that the aforementioned and her partner Kathleen Lynn were “radical Irish nationalists despite coming from middle-class Protestant backgrounds.”
Really – Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet, Bulmer Hobson, Thomas Davis, Maud Gonne, Constance Gore-Booth?
Maybe not as strict a delineation as the word “despite” would suggest. –Yours, etc
DAVID CLARKE,
Edinburgh,
Scotland.
Jayne Mansfield comes to town
On reading Tara Brady’s report from the Cannes Film Festival (May19th), and her coverage of Mariska Hargitay’s documentary on Jayne Mansfield, “My mom Jayne”, I was taken straight back to Sunday, 23rd April, 1967 when my eleven-year-old self attended morning Mass in Saint John’s Church, Tralee.
The celebrant read out a letter from the Roman Catholic Bishop of Kerry, Denis Moynihan, giving a whack of the episcopal crozier to Ms Mansfield’s planned appearance at the Mount Brandon Hotel’s ballroom that very evening.
Naturally, His Lordship did not deign to mention the American star by name, we were told that “a woman is being brought here tonight”, rather as if Jayne Mansfield was making her way from Shannon Airport to Kerry under duress.
The solemnly read letter made it clear to the bishop’s flock that attending the performance to be given by “the Goddess of Lust” would adversely affect his diocese’s moral fibre.
Bishop Moynihan’s subordinate, Tralee’s parish priest, the Dean of Kerry, Monsignor John Lane, went further, thundering about “this attempt to besmirch the name of our town for the sake of filthy gain”.
Perhaps the real concern of both these pillars of moral rectitude was that the punters were expected to turf out 10 shillings, a considerable sum in the Ireland of the mid-1960s, to admire the talents of the American “sex siren” who was to receive £1,000 for singing six songs over a mere 35 minutes on stage.
However, such was the clout of clerical strictures back then that he Bishop and the Dean got their way, even if hundreds of people turned up at the hotel to witness the arrival of the “working man’s Marilyn Monroe”.
A hastily convened press conference informed the nation that the backup band’s van had sadly broken down on the road from Dublin.
Jayne Mansfield’s performance was consequently cancelled and the punters could keep their ten shillings while consoling themselves, at the usual Sunday night ticket price, with local band D.J. (Curtin) and the Kerry Blues who had been lined up to back the American star in the first place.
The much-talented Mansfield was tragically killed in a car accident in Mississipi two months later, leaving five children motherless.
Almost six decades later we can look back with a mixture of amusement, annoyance, nostalgia and outrage to a time when such an innocuous event as an artiste’s ballroom appearance could cause considerable controversy and push all our problems firmly on to the back burner while we in Kerry talked about little else. – Yours, etc,
STEPHEN O’SULLIVAN,
Paris,
France.
Housing solution
Sir, –The solution to Ireland’s housing and infrastructure problem is simple: Declare an emergency, cut through the planning bureaucracy and bring in several thousand skilled workers at all levels for a period of up to five years.
The latter could be housed in spare cruise liners berthed around our ports so as not to add to the housing problem.
An expensive solution? Yes, but the payback over the subsequent decades would justify this approach. – Yours, etc,
JOE DUNNE,
Co Cork.
Trump’s Harvard campaign
Sir, – You report that Donald Trump has intensified his campaign against Harvard university, describing its international students as including “radicalised lunatics” and threatening to take away billions in grants (“Trump threatens to give €3 billion in Harvard grants to trade schools”, World, May 27th). This is part of a wider attack by his administration, of course, on free speech within US academia and, regrettably, there has been some degree of compliance.
Fintan O’Toole, among others, has highlighted, for example, the apparent capitulation of New York’s prestigious Columbia University to the unethical pressure it has been put under by an increasingly authoritarian Trump administration (“If US universities won’t stand up to Trump, no one will”, Opinion, May 20th).
In all of this, there are profoundly consequential issues at stake regarding intellectual freedom, academic independence and, more generally, around the right to protest and publicly dissent. It is clear that these principles are under threat and not just in the United States.
This attack on intellectual freedom has been framed by the Trump administration as a counteraction to the vile belief system of anti-Semitism, but this is self-evidently a Trojan horse and the primary impetus is ideological and aimed at undermining presumed strongholds of “liberal” or “woke” values.
Nonetheless, it is particularly disturbing that this aggressive suppression of academic independence and free speech is being done in defence of Israel’s actions in Gaza. We live in dark times. – Yours, etc,
FINTAN LANE,
Lucan,
Co Dublin.
