Our tinkering with cycles is driving our country over the cliff

Our tinkering with cycles that had stood the test of millennia has left entire populations, cultures and ecologies marooned on extinction’s floodplain, writes Damien Enright

Ireland is slipping into the sea. I hope it will still be there when we get back. People, too, are sliding seaward on their asses, and I don’t mean their donkeys.

A petite English lady holidaying here in La Gomera told me that she had felt safe because her west Cork home sat a-top a hill. Not so now, apparently! The hill top became a mudslide. Stepping into her garden the morning she was setting off on her holiday, she went into serious downhill slippage, her bottom serving as an excellent sleigh.