Letters to the Editor: Infection risk has robbed blind people of touch

National Council for the Blind of Ireland pleads for volunteers during Covid-19

Covid-19 has affected everyone’s lives, including people who are blind or vision-impaired.

Covid-19 presents unique challenges for blind people: It has robbed them of touch, which is a key way that they navigate the world. 

Touching of public surfaces — for example, handrails — is riskier now, because there may be traces of the virus, and this makes it more difficult for blind people to get about.

Also, it is impossible for blind people to abide by social distancing if they are unable to gauge distances or see where queues start. Blind people are less likely to ask for help in these circumstances and more likely to stay at home. 

The virus is especially isolating for them.

Throughout 2020, National Council for the Blind of Ireland (NCBI) service users often said that they were lonely, vulnerable, and isolated, and this is continuing into 2021.

NCBI provides front-line services by diversifying how we reach, engage, and support people by connecting with them online or over the phone.

One such service is the Connection Network, which partners volunteers with service users who may be feeling isolated and lonely. 

This is a free, confidential befriending service for blind or visually impaired people who require social contact through a weekly phonecall.

Staying connected with people is critical to our collective mental health, especially in these challenging and worrying times. The service is about checking in with blind people, listening to their story, and offering them the opportunity to re-engage with NCBI, should they wish to do so.

For the volunteer, it is an opportunity to give back, make new friends, and have a greater understanding of the challenges of sight loss. Calls are made free of charge via the Blueface app.

We would ask anyone interested in volunteering with the NCBI Connection Network to please contact
[e-mail].

June Tinsley

Head of advocacy and communications

National Council for the Blind of Ireland

No case for a zero Covid-19 policy?

Professor Philip Nolan, of Nphet, has dismissed as an “utterly false promise” the idea that Ireland could have zero Covid-19 in a matter of weeks or a few months.

Most people who speak of a zero Covid-19 policy for Ireland probably mean a strategy stringent enough to reduce the infection rate to very low numbers (as in a handful), before relaxing restrictions.

Most likely, advocates of a zero Covid-19 policy also understand that the virus will always be in our midst. 

What most advocates of the zero Covid-19 policy want are stringently policed restrictions until such time as we can all be assured that “opening up” will not lead to another lockdown.

That said, many people, including public officials, believe that it is not possible to impose very stringent measures on Ireland. 

They point to a porous border with Northern Ireland, say that travel into the Republic accounts for very few infections, and remind us that we are a small, open economy that depends on connectivity.

All this is true and creates huge difficulties for stricter restrictions, such as mandatory, supervised quarantines for inbound travellers and checkpoints south of the border. 

Supervised quarantines and border checkpoints could be done by private security firms, but given the Australian experience of such surveillance, the use of gardaí, supported by military personnel, would be preferable.

Bill O’Sullivan

Rochestown Rd

Cork City

Leo’s ‘few beers’ may prove lethal

We are still suffering from the devastating effects of the “meaningful Christmas” that the Government promised us during the second lockdown, in November. 

People are still getting infected because they were allowed to mix and socialise at Christmas, and to travel, and because of the accelerated, new variants of the virus and the inevitable increase in infection in winter.

Now, in the seventh week of the third lockdown, the statement by the Tánaiste, Leo Varadkar, that by the summer we may all be able to enjoy “a few beers with our friends outdoors” seems like another attempt to infantilise the Irish population and to trivialise the seriousness of the situation.

We are still dealing with very high numbers of Covid-19 infections and deaths, serious restrictions of our civil liberties and democratic rights, huge disruption to our children’s education, our state finances, our businesses, and our incomes, and all to the detriment of our mental health.

Does Mr Varadkar really think that the damage, the loss, and the hardship can be fixed by the prospect of a few drinks with friends some time in the future?

Are we now being appeased with the possible reward of a ‘meaningful’ summer?

Dore Fischer

Vernon Grove

Dublin 3

Time to activate the nuclear option

It was encouraging to read your article on a reconsideration of nuclear energy  Government urged to reconsider stance on nuclear power ( Irish Examiner, February 4). 

While Ireland has a “huge” amount of renewable energy, the issue is how this compares with the huge amount of energy we use.

Much discussion of increasing dependency on renewable energy has not been based on data, and unless you can quantify energy, you cannot properly understand it.

Renewable energy is very diffuse: Large areas are required to produce small amounts. What we need are facts and figures.

The most complete discussion of our energy options comes from the late UK chief scientific officer David MacKay’s book, Sustainable Energy: Without the Hot Air (2008). 

As in Ireland today, MacKay takes it as read that transport and heating would be provided by electricity, calculating that Britain might produce 18kw hours per person per day (units per day) from renewable energies, mainly from wind, and this is significantly less than the 125-units-per-day average.

With a land area about one third of Britain’s and a population 10 to 15 times smaller, Ireland could, theoretically, via wind and solar power, provide about 60 units per day countrywide, less than half of the energy we need. 

As our land mass is not capable of supplying all our clean energy from renewables, for how long will Irish governments refuse to discuss the benefits of small, modular nuclear reactors as the reliable support that wind and solar so clearly need?

Anne Baily

Carrick-on-Suir

Co Tipperary

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Footballer ‘Big’ Ben a giant of the game

As a follower of Waterford FC, back in the glory days of League of Ireland football — during the 1960s and 1970s — one of the most iconic characters to grace the field at Kilcohan Park was ‘Big’ Ben Hannigan, a giant of a forward. Sadly, Ben died this month, aged 77.

Even in his later years, it was always a pleasure to watch Ben play for visiting teams (he had three spells with Shelbourne and also played for Dundalk, Shamrock Rovers, Sligo Rovers, St Patrick’s Athletic, and Cork Celtic); he was entertaining even in otherwise dull games. 

Ben Hannigan won cup and league medals with several of those clubs, and was a frequent visitor to Waterford, and also played in
England, with Chelmsford City, and in Wales, for Wrexham. 

We used to wonder who Ben would sign for next, and he even played as far afield as Germany, for Fortuna Koln.

Ben Hannigan had a slight resemblance to banjo player Pecker Dunne, a well-known travelling musician who often busked outside Woolworths in Waterford City on Saturday afternoons. 

In the autumn of his footballing days, when Ben’s skills began to wane, and he might not perform to the standard for which he was known, one of the supporters might shout — during a quiet period in a game — “Take off Big Ben and bring on the Pecker Dunne”, to some laughter, even from the great player himself.

Rest in reace, Big Ben Hannigan: You brought some elation and fine entertainment to the Kilcohan Park crowd on those cold, bleak winter days.

Tom Baldwin

Midleton

Co Cork

Farrell the next to be ‘sin-binned’?

How long will the Ireland senior rugby head coach Andy Farrell persevere with picking players who are clearly not good enough? Hopefully not until the arrival of his P45.

Liam Power

Dundalk

Co Louth

Will the pandemic kill off bullfighting?

I refer to The Last Dance: Can bullfighting recover from Covid-19, by Tommy Martin ( Irish Examiner, January 29). While I welcome the news that bullfighting faces an uncertain future because of Covid-19, it is sad that it has taken a global emergency to curtail this organised cruelty.

Fans of the practice cite tradition and describe what happens in the bullring as art, but no excuse can justify the torture of an animal for amusement.

John Fitzgerald

Callan,

Co Kilkenny