Sir, – Over the past few nights west Dublin has experienced disturbing scenes of violence, intolerance and unrest. For adults, this has been distressing to witness, for children, it is undoubtedly more so.
It is important that in our response as adults, we are aware of the presence, place and the vulnerabilities of all children exposed to unlawful and violent behaviour.
Children and young people living in the International Protection Accommodation Service (Ipas) centre have faced renewed trauma, confronted by intimidation and violence outside their doors.
Children in the wider community have watched their neighbourhood overtaken by rioting and fear. Others have become directly involved in the unrest, influenced by adults and unaware of the harm they are inflicting, both on others and their own futures.
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As a society, we must reflect on the kind of community we wish to nurture, which is a society that is safe, inclusive, and hopeful for all children and young people.
We should aspire to raise a generation capable of living respectfully with differences of perspective, background, and belief.
The words we use matter and will have a profound impact on how children develop empathy and tolerance. Adults bear the responsibility of demonstrating that complex issues such as immigration can be spoken about with reason, compassion and respect.
While we may not always share the same views, we can and must demonstrate respectful ways of expressing them. – Yours, etc,
SUZANNE CONNOLLY,
CEO Barnardos,
Christchurch Square,
Dublin 8.
The simple act of voting
Sir, – Despite the often bewildering campaign that preceded it on this occasion, there is much to be said for the simple act of voting in an election. As dawn was breaking, I locked my bicycle to a railing outside my local polling station and was delighted to enter the building to be greeted by smiling faces of the diligent staff and a surprising number of friends and neighbours.
The sense of joy and shared purpose was palpable. Handshakes and good spirited conversation ultimately led to the polling booth and the privilege of having my voice heard.
Feeling thus invigorated with a sense of civic pride and duty, I felt compelled to stop at almost every red light on my subsequent cycle to work. – Yours, etc,
RONAN McDERMOTT,
Rathgar,
Dublin 6.
Bloody Sunday soldier F trial
Sir, – The acquittal of “soldier F” in the Bloody Sunday murder trial more than 50 years after the event is hardly surprising. What is surprising, however, is that only one low-ranking soldier appeared in the dock.
In such cases involving state actors, the people to be tried in the first instance should be those responsible at the highest political and military levels and only when they have been held appropriately to account should low-ranking soldiers, blindly following orders be brought before the courts.
It is totally unacceptable that those at the very highest levels of the British establishment have been able to walk away while those at the very lowest levels are put on trial. – Yours, etc,
HUGH PIERCE,
Celbridge,
Co Kildare .
Paying for Ukraine
Sir, – I remember growing up as a young boy in Cork in the 1950s when one of our “gang” accidentally broke a neighbour’s window with a football and it had to be paid for.
Not by the victim, but by the perpetrator’s parents – if we were caught. We subsequently paid for our “crime” by some kind of “punishment” meted out by our parents. This was the norm back then.
What Russia is inflicting on the Ukraine is illegal, and carried out for the whole world to see every day. Would the European Union ever get on with it and use those frozen assets without further delay. – Yours, etc,
PAT O’REILLY,
Clonakilty,
Co Cork.
Infastructure: more than a typo
Sir, – It seems the Department of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation has inadvertently offered us a metaphor in placard form.
The misspelling of “infrastructure” as “infastructure” – and the conspicuous absence of commas – might be dismissed as a minor slip, but perhaps it’s more telling than we realise.
We are now three months on from the €275.4 billion national development plan announcement, yet the Transport Infrastructure Ireland website reads more like a heritage blog than a construction bulletin.
The latest updates include a drone survey over Parnell Square, monthly traffic statistics, a fire at a bridge, and a warm welcome for a railway order – but not a single shovel in the ground.
The placard’s lack of punctuation is oddly fitting: a breathless rush of ambition with no pause for delivery. – Yours, etc,
STEPHEN McGOVERN,
Donnybrook,
Dublin 4.
Marathon journeys
Sir, – It must be the October Bank Holiday weekend. Why’s that, you ask?
Because there are no northbound trains past Connolly Station.
But isn’t there a marathon?
Yes, but it’s a tradition to make travelling around Dublin as difficult as possible on bank holiday weekends, and we shall not change tradition. – Yours, etc,
FIONA BROGAN,
East Wall,
Dublin 3.
Schools and special classes
Sir, – I read with interest the article “Not having a special class is not a sign of a school’s non-commitment to inclusion” (October 22nd), and I agree with much of what John McHugh says regarding the need for proper facilities and support for schools when opening special classes. However, these same points are also too often used by schools as excuses not to open such classes where they are clearly needed.
The Department and the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) were right to examine schools’ capacity, given the number of families desperately seeking places for their children. The legislation Mr McHugh refers to was introduced precisely because some schools have actively avoided – and continue to avoid – the opening of these classes.
If it is considered “political zeal” to limit schools’ autonomy and professional agency in order to ensure that children with complex needs have access to education, then so be it.
Schools have less control now because many chose to sit back and “wait for the NCSE” to contact them rather than taking the initiative and being proactive.
In all honesty, where did these schools think the siblings with additional educational needs of their current pupils were going to go?
Admittedly, the department’s approach is not perfect and is fraught with difficulties. But doing our best is far better than doing nothing.
As Eamonn Ó Murchú, former principal of St Ciaran’s in Glasnevin, said 35 years ago when speaking about integration: “We just need to get on with it; these are children and we are the adults.” – Yours, etc,
TOM MORIARTY,
Principal,
Adamstown Castle ETNS,
Adamstown,
Co Dublin.
Election bingo
Sir, – It’s time to open the newspapers the day after an election and play photojournalism bingo:
1) Bride, in full wedding regalia, who stopped at a polling station on the way to her wedding, score five points.
2) One point for each elderly nun pictured arriving to vote. Bonus point if the caption has a pun on the word “habit”, or any nun is aged 100 years old or more.
3) One point each for a garda and presiding officer pictured in a deserted polling station on an offshore island. Bonus points if either is drinking tea, or the presiding officer is wearing a tweed cap or an Aran sweater.
Five points or more is a winning score. Begin. – Yours, etc,
FRANK NEENAN,
Tullow Road,
Carlow.
Climate change and farming
Sir, – In his recent article “Cutting the entire cattle herd to reduce emissions makes no economic sense,” Prof John FitzGerald usefully acknowledges the scale of change required in the Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) sector.
However, his article misrepresents our recent study, National temperature neutrality, agricultural methane and climate policy: reinforcing inequality in the global food system.
First, FitzGerald writes that “some of these scientists also argue that Ireland should essentially end all livestock production”, and implies that this is advocated in our study. That is incorrect.
Our study does not call for ending livestock farming. Nor does it make any recommendations about its future structure or scale.
Second, FitzGerald suggests our work advocates a per-capita methane quota. It does not. We presented per-capita methane as a diagnostic to illustrate disparities in methane emissions across countries.
The study does not propose a quota or trading scheme. Our study highlights the risks and uncertainties created for Irish society by the Climate Change Advisory Council’s (CCAC) proposed “temperature neutrality” approach to carbon budgets, which defines climate ambition around a moving target that depends on uncertain future global emissions.
It also exposes the underlying value judgments embedded in this framing, which undermine climate ambition, global fairness, food security and land use policy.
Arguments that hide the scale of the climate challenge behind a flawed national “temperature neutrality” target, and the false premise that Ireland’s agricultural sector is economically optimised and feeding the world, have become increasingly common.
However, they avoid the clear-headed, strategic decisions needed to set Irish farmers up for success in a rapidly changing world.
From a global food security perspective, Ireland exports around 90 per cent of its animal-sourced food products, yet less than 1 per cent of those exports reach low-income, food-insecure countries.
Domestically, fewer than half of Irish farms are economically viable, despite the sector receiving billions in public subsidies.
Post-2030, Irish taxpayers will be paying billions of euro to purchase carbon credits from overseas to compensate for missing EU climate targets. Continuation of business-as-usual sells both Irish farmers and society short by failing to invest in our land’s potential to deliver healthy and sustainable food, bio-based materials, energy, carbon removals and ecosystem services.
Our study does not present an extreme position. Instead, it calls for ambitious, Paris Agreement-aligned land use policy with clear targets, enabling Irish society to steer the AFOLU sector toward a sustainable transition pathway.
The potential for a positive, resilient, and diversified AFOLU sector is clearly shown in scenario modelling contained in the yet-to-be-released Land Use Review Phase 2 report completed in May this year.
The question is not whether farming will dramatically change over the coming decades, but how that change can be managed to deliver the most robust, sustainable, and secure outcomes for Irish society.
Framing the debate as a false dichotomy between a flawed climate target and an “end to livestock farming” distracts from the real choices involved in shaping a more sustainable, resilient, and vibrant AFOLU sector.
The climate, Ireland’s farmers, and Irish society as a whole, are best served by ambition, scientific rigour and robust debate on real choices, not by shifting the goalposts, or the mischaracterisation of legitimate research and researchers as extreme or anti-farming. – Yours, etc,
Dr COLM DUFFY,
University of Galway,
Dr RÓISÍN MORIARTY,
University College Cork,
Prof HANNAH DALY,
University College Cork,
DAVID STYLES, associate professor, University of Galway.
Controversy continues
Sir, – It was heartening to see the letter from Tom Wernecke, European Association for Psychotherapy (October 22nd), in which he states representative body Coru’s proposed psychotherapy standards would “make Ireland the only EU country with substandard psychotherapy qualifications enshrined by legislation”.
He expressed very well what Irish psychotherapists have been trying to communicate to Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, hitherto unsuccessfully. The Minister’s repeated response to our concerns has been to cite the EU requirement for “proportionality” when regulating a profession. And Coru’s response has been a haughty dismissal that psychotherapists misunderstand proportionality.
Something we do understand is gaslighting – a feature of which is systemic misdirection away from the important issue at hand. I believe the important issue to be this – without personal therapy and supervision there will be no means of weeding out the people who will train in this profession and be entirely unsuited to working with emotionally vulnerable people.
Ireland does not have a good history of providing oversight of those charged with the care of our most vulnerable people. Could we not aim higher this time? – Yours etc.
EVA MOLYNEUX,
Psychoanalytic psychotherapist,
Glenageary,
Co Dublin.
More hyperbole
Sir, – May I add to Frank McNally’s list of 100 hyperboles, in light of recent events in Saggart?
– Ceád mile fáilte
– Ireland of the welcomes
– The island of saints and scholars
– All changed, changed utterly, A terrible beauty is born
– You have disgraced yourselves again. – Yours, etc,
NUALA GALLAGHER,
Castleknock,
Dublin 15.
Sir, – Some more suggestions for Frank McNally’s list:
– Beggars on horseback
– As drunk as a skunk
– One-trick pony
– How’s she cuttin’? – Yours, etc,
HILARY FINLAY,
Dublin.
