Proponents of lowering the voting age to 16 appear to ignore some of the glaring contradictions in their own arguments. Currently, there are social and legal restrictions on 16- and 17-year-olds, still children under the law: they cannot marry, sit on a jury, enter into a legal contract, buy a lottery ticket, cigarettes or alcohol, and cannot ring a radio or TV show to enter competitions for prize money.
Interestingly, and to my surprise, one of the big music events of the summer, Electric Picnic, is, according to its website, “a strictly over 18s event,” and goes on to say “children aged 13-17 years are not permitted to attend even when accompanied by an adult". What does that say?
With all of the above in mind, surely there is food for thought in suggesting that children of 16/17 should be allowed to vote, which is one of the most responsible obligations any adult citizen bears.
And why the rush? Today’s 16/17-year-olds will live longer and have many more opportunities to vote than the generation that had to wait until the age of 21 to vote and latterly until 18? I suggest we allow children to live out their childhood until they become adults. Yes, they will have to wait to 18 to vote but that won’t drastically deprive them of anything, indeed waiting for some rights makes them all the more valuable when attained.
Imagine the bonanza for politicians with highly impressionable 16/17-year-olds in their sights.
Noel Howard, Kilworth, Co Cork
Clifford’s ‘diatribe’ on Sinn Féin
Your columnist Mick Clifford ( ‘MacSwiney’s legacy stolen by Sinn Féin’, August 19) delivered what can only be called a diatribe. Please allow me to correct a couple of inaccuracies before making a general point.
Firstly, Sinn Féin has been holding commemorations of our patriot dead for decades. It is nonsense to suggest that the party suddenly decided to hold ‘rival’ commemorations during the Decade of Centenaries.
In fact, the largest commemoration in 2016 was neither by the State nor by Sinn Féin but by Reclaim the Vision of 1916, a citizens’ initiative led by artists which brought tens of thousands of people to the GPO on April 24, 2016, to celebrate the legacy of the Proclamation of the Republic.
Secondly, Sinn Féin held a vigil outside Kilmainham Jail, not Mountjoy as stated by Mick Clifford, in November 2022 to mark the centenary of the first prison executions of republicans by the Free State government.
The circumstances at the time of Terence MacSwiney’s hunger strike in 1920 and that of Bobby Sands in 1981 were different. There were also many parallels, not least their “supreme courage and selfless disposition”, which your columnist acknowledges.
But they were not “from different worlds” and “incomparable circumstances”. On the contrary, they were from the same country, they were both branded as criminals by the British regime, and both resisted that regime. And, as Mick Clifford conveniently neglects to mention, both MacSwiney and Sands were elected by the people.
Sixty years separated their deaths, the very lifespan of the Orange state in which Bobby Sands grew up, the partitioned, sectarian, militarised reality that led him to join the IRA. But Mick Clifford’s diatribe is best answered by the words of these brave men themselves:
“Not all the armies of all the Empires of earth can crush the spirit of one true man. And that one man will prevail.” — Terence MacSwiney.
“They have nothing in their entire imperial arsenal to break the spirit of one single Republican prisoner of war who refuses to be broken.” — Bobby Sands
Mícheál Mac Donncha, Commemorations committee, Sinn Féin
Airport noise: Shut down the runway
Re your article ‘It’s like going from living in heaven to hell’: Residents furious over noise from overhead jets' (Irish Examiner, August 19)
I have lived here for 32 years and the increased noise from Dublin Airport has made our lives unbearable. I was awakened at 5.30am on Saturday. The noise has continued.
Despite many phone calls, I have never had any reply from the Daa, whom I now refer to as the Dublin Arrogance Authority.
I feel that the Daa should be disbanded and the North runway should be shut down.
Eric Duffy, Swords, Co Dublin
With airlines, it’s all about money
I read with great interest your excellent article on 19 August concerning the disastrous experience of residents in the Coolquay area from aircraft noise since the opening of the new runway at Dublin Airport.
Living a bit further out the road in Ashbourne, I can confirm the experience is just as bad but perhaps not as intense as those unfortunates in Coolquay.
People speculate in the article that the unforeseen sharp right turn after take-off is to maximise the number of flights or to reduce risk attached to going around flights that may have aborted a landing.
I would suggest it’s much simpler than that. Driven by Ryanair’s minimise fuel cost strategy that so many airlines follow, it’s a decision to turn right as soon as possible to turn east as quickly as they can as most flights are heading in the direction of Britain or Europe.
Ryanair has long provided bonuses to pilots who can land and take the early taxiway to minimise fuel costs in taxiing to the terminal. The same applies here at takeoff. The prevailing winds are west/southwest dictating the aircraft take off into the wind which means heading west on take-off.
Flying five miles west before turning means an extra 10 miles of fuel unnecessarily used from the airline’s point of view. Why burn that when a sharp right turn after take-off avoids that “wastage” in the airline’s eyes?
So really, it’s down to money and to hell with the residents. Michael O’Leary was the most vocal in opposing any reduction in the flights operating over the permitted number at night as financially his airline has the most to lose.
Sadly, the action by the Daa in appealing the terms of the planning permission from Fingal County Council (hearing to be heard in November so this summer is looked after) would suggest who they really listen to and want to appease. And it is not the residents in the aforementioned areas.
Bob Barry, Ashbourne, Co Meath
It was time for Tubridy to go
I have nothing against Ryan Tubridy, but he just lost the run of himself over the years. He was given the opportunity several times over the past months to drop the hubris and be the person that he always presents himself to be. He just couldn’t do it, and so it was most certainly time for him to go.
Mark Mendel, Innishannon, Cork
Time for RTÉ to get back to work
Economists have a saying: “When something can’t go on forever, it doesn’t.”
Ryan Tubridy’s absence from RTÉ’s airwaves is becoming difficult to explain. We are blinded by figures.
“Something happened” and “the beatings will continue until morale improves”. This seems to be the general and miserable narrative.
Whatever the ins and outs (and I am certain that lawyers will be the main beneficiaries of that hair-splitting pettifogging journey down the rabbit hole) it is time everyone got back to work.
Radio presenters with national audiences make big money. Alert the media. So do air traffic controllers and estate agents. Get over it.
Just publish the facts, do better in the future, and get on with the job. The RTÉ listenership prefers Ryan Tubridy to lawyers. Get that man back to his Oasis where he can do his thing.
Michael Deasy, Donegal
