Irish Examiner view: Take time to recognise good things

Ciara Mageean's death last weekend unified the country in grief

Ciara Mageean at her book launch in June this year. ' In candid media interviews and her terrific book, she detailed the impact of that illness in stark, heartbreaking terms.' File picture: Sasko Lazarov/Photocall Ireland

The death of Ciara Mageean last weekend unified the country in grief, which was understandable.

The Down woman was just 34, after all, and as a former Olympic runner would have been considered supremely fit and healthy until her diagnosis with bowel cancer. Although that diagnosis was widely known, the news of her passing last Sunday still came as a shock.

People knew of Mageean’s illness because she did not hide it — the opposite, in fact. In candid media interviews and her terrific book, she detailed the impact of that illness in stark, heartbreaking terms, articulating the sense of loss when discussing the family she would not live to have, for instance.

That honesty helps to explain the outpouring of sadness at her death — and the crowds who attended her funeral yesterday in Portaferry. The huge affection and respect in which she was held was visible There is no consolation for Ciaran Mageean’s family and friends now, in the raw days after her passing. In time to come they may draw some small comfort from the fact that the whole country mourned with them.

Ciara herself shared some sage advice which is even more resonant this week: “You need to stop and smell the roses, because this doesn’t last forever. Relish those moments — that might be in your garden with your kids and you just think, ‘there’s nowhere I’d rather be’.

“We need to celebrate the joys in life, and we need to verbalise them a lot more. I think all of us need to take a moment and smell the roses and think, ‘okay, there’s good stuff to celebrate in life’.”

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a hanam.

Freezer hacks a chilling portent

Readers may recall the impact of a wide-ranging cyberattack last month across Europe, and France in particular. Hackers struck at supermarkets by interfering remotely to raise the temperature settings in the fridges and freezers of hundreds of stores.

As a result of those raised temperatures, millions of euro worth of perishable goods had to be destroyed.

At the time there were suggestions that a particular vulnerability made the systems in question susceptible to such attacks, but this week saw another such incident, which also affected refrigerated storage in multiple European countries, including Ireland.

Musgrave, which owns Supervalu, confirmed that a cyber incident had affected a particular refrigeration system in 13 stores, adding that its own monitoring systems alerted it to the attack. The company removed all chilled and frozen products in the affected stores from sale, adding that restocking of the affected stores was underway.

However, questions remain not just about the particular challenges facing Super Valu, or other supermarket chains, but about the basic issue of food security. This is complicated by the possibility that the vulnerabilities cited in the cases above may be compounded by another factor — artificial intelligence (AI).

As Ronan Murphy of Smarttech told Amy Campbell this week, incidents like this will continue to occur because anything with an internet connection is “hackable”. The vulnerability is compounded by AI, he added: “The whole world is running on software now, and AI has the ability to write software fast, but that means it knows where the weaknesses are and how to break in.”

It seems extraordinary that once again we are being shown in real time that something which is sold to society on the promise of efficiency — AI — has the potential to be the most inefficient, if not most dangerous, matter that society has to deal with.

The supermarket hacking may not be causing huge problems for many people, but it may be a disturbing portent of the future.

Citizens won’t think about EU

Another public service strike has been announced, but this one comes with something of a twist.

The disruption caused by the last such work stoppage was considerable, and the prospect of teachers, nurses, and other civil and public servants taking industrial action next week is likely to have many readers frowning as they try to make alternative arrangements.

That date for that industrial action is significant, coinciding as it does with a significant date on the government’s calendar. The administration is now facing into a potentially embarrassing scenario where 300,000 public sector workers are on strike on the same day as the biggest event of its Ireland’s European presidency, November 12.

That is the date of the European Political Community (EPC) meeting in Dublin. The unions have since claimed that they originally considered holding the industrial action for November 11 and did not reschedule to the following day to coincide with the EPC meeting, but the timing certainly appears to be intended for maximum impact.

If there is a general breakdown in civil service work related to this meeting, then that will certainly have a significant impact on the events of the day. It is difficult not to feel that the Government should have anticipated this scenario, as it was entirely likely that the unions would find the appeal of industrial action on the day of the EPC meeting irresistible. The Government might have sidestepped this by showing more initiative during recent negotiations with those unions.

If the strike goes ahead it is likely that most citizens will be focused on disruption to their routines and appointments, as was the case with last month’s industrial action. The potential embarrassment of the Government before its European counterparts is unlikely to occupy their attention to the same extent.

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