Letter to the Editor: Vote against nurses’ pay was utterly shameful
How often have we heard politicians use this term: “we are all in this together”? TDs get a salary of €98,000 which increases if one is a minister or junior minister. A payment to sit on a committee is additional. Then there are allowances, including travel to and from Houses of Oireachtas (not many employees have such a payment), accommodation, entertainment. Then administrative support, laptop, mobile phones etc, etc. Each member of the Oireachtas costs the taxpayer a considerable amount each year. I am not complaining about this or their “entitlements”.
During the pandemic many TDs worked from home still receiving their salaries and entitlements. Again, no complaint from me.
Yet, when those reasonable, well-paid representatives who were NOT requested to endanger themselves or their families were asked to approve payment for student nurses the majority voted “NO PAYMENT”. To those who voted “NO” — I say you should hand your heads in shame, you are a disgrace to decency and integrity.
Michael A Moriarty
Rochestown
Cork
Publish details if making accusation
I was shocked to see on the front page today (Irish Examiner 5/12/20) that Brian Stanley has been accused of “further tweets” that have been called racist. I turned to page 8 to learn more. Here the racist element of Mr Stanley’s controversy was charged to be a “radio interview that has been dubbed racist”. With no further details of what the interview was, I turned to page 19 with the hopes of finding out what Mr Stanley said. Here Michael Clifford also did not mention the alleged racist interview. If it is in the public interest to report on allegations of improper conduct against a TD, surely as full details as possible should be included, so that the public can be aware of what was said?
Jack Desmond
Timoleague
Bandon
Co Cork
Complacency is Sinn Féin’s best ally
There is no point bleating about the rise of Sinn Fèin. Every time you do it, you make a show of yourself. Go out and persuade us to come back. You’re the reason we left.
Sinn Féin are on the rise because you have been complacent, inept and comfortable. You have been “philosophical” about the suffering of others for far too long.
Martin Luther King once said that “riot is the language of the un-heard” An awful lot of people feel un-heard for far too long. You side with doctors over patients. You say “Leo has a point”. You let Fine Gael make meat of the weak. You need to stop talking and start listening. The demonisation of Sinn Féin and the people who vote for them is just another way of saying “I will never listen, learn, or take responsibility”.
This country needs Fianna Fáil to resume being Fianna Fàil. Not bleating. Not saying “tell me it isn’t so”. Not praying for rescue. Not sitting in Fine Gael’s lap. That lap is Fianna Fáil’s grave. And if you can’t do it, we need someone who can.
Michael Deasy
Carrigart
Co Donegal
McDonald missed brunt of Troubles
It’s hard to take Mary Lou McDonald seriously.
The current leader of Sinn Féin, born 1969, attended the same private school as my daughters — Notre Dame in Churchtown. The nuns have since pulled out, which is probably just a coincidence and not embarrassment. She then attended three universities, all in the South, which brings us to around 1996. The Good Friday Agreement was signed in April 1998 followed by the mother of all atrocities — the Omagh bombing in August 1998. She joined Sinn Féin in 2000. So when Mary Lou is banging on about troops on the street and the British occupation in Northern Ireland she is delusional because she missed it all — the troops, bodies in ditches and the carnage caused by high explosives — she wasn’t even there. And is she just another “posh bird” like Rose Dugdale and Patty Hearst attracted by the excitement of terrorism. If she had personally experienced/witnessed, the atrocities she might have a better understanding of the damage caused by what I suspect are planned “slip-ups” (Cullinane, Storey, Stanley) aimed at keeping the fires burning for next generation of Shinners because if they are anything they are not stupid and any criticism of SF paradoxically boosts there standing in the polls just like Trump and Hitler.
Dr Michael Foley
Palmerston Gardens
Rathmines
Dublin 6
DPP should not be unaccountable
I can safely assume, having watched the RTÉ programme on conman Patrick Russell, that I am not the only one wondering why he was not prosecuted many times over. The usual procedure is that a file is sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions who decides whether to prosecute or not.
Now, if memory serves me right I seem to remember a case many years ago where a TD rose in Dáil Eireann and asked why a certain case had not been prosecuted. When told by the Ceann Comhairle that he “could not ask because the Director of Public Prosecutions is independent” he replied “Yes, independent, but not unaccountable!” Was he right? If so should the same question not be asked now?
Brendan Casserly
Bishopstown
Cork
Gaza’s politicians hurting their own
Oisin McConvile’s well meaning article (Friday, November 4) is a refreshing reminder of what might have been the prosperous future of Gaza,
I am sure that everyone can admire the resilience of the people, but where is the condemnation of the leadership they have elected?
They criminally use resources intended for civilian purposes building and launching rockets, missiles and the latest invention, balloons which ignite on landing in agricultural fields in Israel
When Yasser Arafat returned from exile in Tunisia in the wake of the Oslo accords there was much hope that Gaza would become like Singapore or Hong Kong. This idea of peace through prosperity was supposedly supported by the EU (who seem to have forgotten about their obligations in this matter and have exerted a lot of effort supporting anti-Israeli initiatives).
At the time in the late 1990s, Shimon Peres, the then Israeli foreign minister and his staff (including incidentally a previous Israel ambassador to Ireland Mark Sofer) went around the world encouraging EU and other countries to invest in the economic development of the Gaza area.
Even today hundreds of truckloads of essential goods are dispatched by Israel. Very little is allowed in from Egypt, which occupied Gaza between the invasion of 1948 until 1967, during which period there was supposed to be an impervious border between Israel and Gaza.
When the Hamas rule of Gaza ends there should be some hope.
Frank Baigel
Ravensway
Bury
Lancashire
England
McConville wrong on Gaza’s issues
Oisin McConville has skimped his homework. The closure of Gaza started in 1949 when King Farouk “the Crook” had his provost seal the Rafah crossing to stop Egyptian migrants to Palestine from returning home to Egypt as a result of the disturbances of the war he had started which like all wars causes lots of civilians to flee: Belgians to France and Britain in 1914 and a lot of Parisians in 1940 to their original villages — besides the Poles and Russians in 1915.
For proof: about a third of Gazans are surnamed Masri — Egyptian — and Gaza was completely shut till 1967 by the Arab boycott of Israel. It was quite ex-gratia that Israel gave the medical staff update training in 1967 and since and allowed any number of Gazans — enemy citizens — to work in Israel. It is not a right of Gazans — as enemy citizens by their own choice — to work in, or trade with Israel. It is convenient to both parties and the gratuitous and clumsy hostility of the Hamas apology for government neither helps its own constituents nor promotes peace.
If Oisin McConville really cared for the Gazans not making a middle-class life he would refrain from crocodile sentiments, analyse, criticise and recommend how the Hamas medieval sectarians could modernise by switching budgets from building rockets and saps to repairing public infrastructure.
Frank Adam
Hartley Ave
Prestwich
England
Seeing Shannon in full flow
President Michael D’s tribute to Sharon Shannon on Friday’s Late Late Show was as Jimmy Magee might say: “Different class, different class”.
Brian A Mongan
Cahergal Lawn
Cork
