Irish Examiner view: Support for our neighbours while protecting neutrality
Taoiseach Micheál Martin is in Denmark this week for a series of engagements including an informal meeting in Copenhagen with heads of state or government of EU members. Picture: Mark Stedman
Taoiseach Micheál Martin is in Denmark this week for a series of engagements, with the most significant date in his diary an informal meeting with heads of state or government of EU member states in Copenhagen.
The meeting is part of the Danish presidency of the Council of the EU and will focus on strengthening Europe’s defence readiness, as well as reinforcing support for Ukraine.
The location for the meeting is appropriate given that agenda: last week Denmark suffered drone incursions which necessitated the shutting of Copenhagen airport for several hours, while another such incursion at a military site in Aalborg also caused concern.
Other nations in the general vicinity, from Germany to Norway, have also faced similar incursions at various times recently, and there seems to be general agreement that Russia is responsible for these drone attacks. Those form part of the new ‘hybrid warfare’ approach when combined with cyber-attacks on vital infrastructure.
For obvious reasons of geography Russian aggression is a pressing concern for the countries mentioned above, and among the proposals the Denmark meeting is expected to hear is the ‘drone wall’ suggested by European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen last month.
Those in attendance may also be briefed on another project — the Eastern Flank Watch, which aims to fortify the EU’s eastern borders by sea, air, and land to protect against the
hybrid warfare mentioned above, as well as from Russia’s shadow fleet.
These are worrying times, best summarised by German chancellor Friedrich Merz last week: “We are not at war, but we are no longer at peace either. We must do much more for our own security.”
All of which raises an obvious question: what does this mean for Ireland?
As EU members, we are pledged to provide mutual support and co-operation, but we also have a long-standing commitment to neutrality.
Reconciling those imperatives may yet prove to be one of the Government’s trickiest challenges.
The recent large-scale fish kill in north Cork’s Blackwater river is a national scandal.
Earlier this week the Oireachtas committee on climate, environment, and energy heard from a series of witnesses about this disaster, and one of them, Conor Arnold, summed up the situation with this devastating assertion.
“Ultimately, the time lost plus the State bodies’ complete inability to observe international best practices during their investigations has resulted in a lack of evidence which has made an appropriate prosecution very difficult.”
The abject failure of the State here is very difficult to accept, with apparent failings at every level.
The governing legislation is outdated and no longer fit for purpose, while the levels of financial penalty available to punish offenders are not stiff enough to give them pause.
The motivations of those happy to kill tens of thousands of fish can only be guessed at, but it was truly disappointing to hear Mr Arnold’s indictment of the State’s performance in addressing this situation. After all, we look to State organisations to safeguard our environment and to identify those who damage it, not to become part of the problem by allowing offenders to escape scot free.
It has been estimated it may take up to 10 years for the local ecosystem to recover fully, and the scale of the damage means that recovery is not certain. Describing the incident as a disaster is no exaggeration.
Such a self-inflicted wound is all the harder to stomach when set alongside the large-scale environmental problems we face.
Just this week we learned that Europe is losing land equivalent to 600 soccer pitches every day to housing development and other uses; this is land which once harboured wildlife, captured carbon, and supplied food.
What has happened to the Blackwater is just as dispiriting.
Readers who are following the new Netflix series may be interested to learn of the glowing reviews the production is receiving in the UK and US.
And how sharp the contrast is with the views of critics here. and the BBC have both reported on the negativity surrounding the series in Ireland, with both outlets citing the ’s review as evidence of indigenous unhappiness.
As Pat Fitzpatrick put in these pages: “If it’s pitched as a cross between and , then it lacks the comedy of the former and the jeopardy of the latter... is all pour, no pint.”
Other outlets have added various crimes to the charge sheet, which range from very dubious Irish accents to suspiciously leprechaun-coded costume choices.
Granted, the former appears to be a challenge for many actors — how often have readers heard a convincing Irish accent from a non-Irish performer? — but dressing Irish characters in green costumes certainly seems a lazy choice at best.
As Pat Fitzpatrick pointed out, the series has a good deal going for it — the soundtrack taps into the current vogue for Irish music, while the production team also comes with a good record. The creator and writer is Steven Knight, for instance, who was responsible for the hit show . However, does this now mean that was not 100% historically accurate?
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