Sir, - We are more than puzzled at the treatment of the Dublin building workers' protest in your editions of Wednesday, September 15th. This was one of the biggest demonstrations of workers in recent years, held to highlight a matter of literally life or death, and the responsibilities of statutory bodies. Yet what was on page 1? A large and charming picture of happy nuns, and a story of disquiet about exam standards of Irish.
The carnage in the building industry is appalling: if the same numbers were killed in places like the Balkans or East Timor - which received huge coverage in the same edition - there would be a proper concern and action would be debated at length. If the same numbers of whales, dolphins or badgers were killed or maltreated, we would hear all about it. Are building workers to be regarded as non-newsworthy, expendable? In newspaper reports of accidents 150 years ago there occur phrases like: "none of those killed were persons of quality or consequence." Is this the mentality to which we are returning?
It was noticeable that on RTE Radio 1, when Minister Tom Kitt was being interviewed on the midday news programme, he offered sympathy to the family of an accident victim, but hadn't troubled to find out the man's name. The points being made in the protest were underlined within hours, in the most poignant and tragic way possible, with the death of another young worker. It didn't merit a separate headline: only the briefest of paragraphs, and the name of the site owner/employer was not given.
The attitudes inherent in your treatment of this story, relegating it to the bottom of page 2 with no picture, are hardly calculated to heal divisions in this greed-ridden and deeply polarised society.
We have come to rely on The Irish Times for full and fair coverage of the news, with no hidden agendas interfering with proper news values. But the treatment of our own story has raised doubts in the minds of many of our members, which are not as easily dispelled as they should be. - Yours, etc.,
Eric Fleming, Branch Secretary, Construction & Allied Trades Branch, SIPTU, Liberty Hall, Dublin 1.