Letters to the Editor: No lesson in comparing teachers to retail staff

 The Mass Vaccination Centre at Cork City Hall, ready to continue the COVID vaccine roll-out. Picture: Andy Gibson

The decision to vaccinate based on age rather than key-worker status has pushed teachers down the queue. Comparisons with retail workers are pointless.

1. Retail customers do not remain on the premises, in close proximity to the staff, for hours at a time.

2. Retail customers are adults, by and large. They are better at social distancing, and at observing the pandemic restrictions, than teenagers and children.

3. Retail customers tend not to use the toilet on the premises and in the infrequent instances when they do so, they do not require assistance or supervision.

4. Retail customers travel to the shop independently, usually in singly occupied cars. Schoolchildren tend to travel to school in densely congregated buses.

5. Our test-and-trace system (such as it is) identifies infected adults far better than it does infected children.

Our retail workers have fed us for a year.

They don’t get paid very well. But the points above are relevant to any comparison.

Michael Deasy

Carrigart

Co Donegal

Teachers should know their place

So the three teacher unions are threatening industrial action over the Government’s revised vaccination strategy.

What a self-entitled lot — they should try to be a better example of ‘togetherness’, but they have misjudged the public mood.

May I salute the employees of the supermarkets — now, they are true heroes and do their work with a smile and with empathy.

Tom Mulcahy

Cobh

Co Cork

Catholic moral teaching is clear

Nick Folley (Irish Examiner, Letters, April 1) is right to defend the absolute clarity of Catholic moral teaching. 

The muddled Church of Ireland tradition can feel very different. Five evangelists were ordained in the Down and Dromore diocese in 2017, after a two-year course involving New Wine Ireland, based in Belfast.

Two of us had very serious concerns. 

The response of the denomination left me disillusioned. Clear moral teaching, properly applied in an honest and transparent way, is a great credit to the Catholic tradition.

Dr James Hardy

Belfast

Northen Ireland

No ‘sin’ in not wearing a mask

Fr Tim Hazlewood has criticised Bishop Alphonsus Cullinan for not wearing a mask while celebrating Mass with some priests who, presumably, had no objection to doing so. 

Bishop of Waterford and Lismore, Alphonsus Cullinan.

You say Fr Hazlewood is a “leading member” of the Association of Catholic Priests. It seems to be characteristic of that association that its members don’t attach much value to the sacraments, and to the Mass in particular.

Michael O’Donovan

Co Wexford

Praise of UK is undeserved

Michael Henchion says that the UK government deserves praise, while the EU deserves criticism, for their Covid-19 measures and vaccination programme (Irish Examiner, Letters, April 5). That is open to challenge.

The death rate from Covid-19 in the UK is much higher than in most of the EU and is more than twice the death rate in this country.

Not alone that, but some of the highest instances of the disease in this country are in counties along the Northern Ireland border.

In addition, while the UK has received all of its orders of the vaccine, one of the main suppliers to the EU has had a huge shortfall in the target it signed up to meet.

That has contributed to the slowness of rollout in the EU.

Citing the vaccination issue — over which there are major questions in relation to fairness of supply — as evidence of the UK’s ‘administative prowess’ is not right.

In the Covid-19 issues over which it has control, Ireland has been much more successful than the UK.

A Leavy

Sutton

Dublin 13

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Why Cork vaccine centres closed?

Great to see the mass vaccination centres in the Helix and The Aviva apparently going strong.

Made it all the more disappointing to see all three Cork City centres — at City Hall, Munster Technology University, and Páirc Uí Chaoimh — apparently out of action for most of the weekend. Is there a reason?

Brendan Ryan

Montenotte

Cork City

Let’s not regress on transgender rights

A number of letters have been printed in newspapers recently suggesting that there was no campaign for the Gender Recognition Act in 2015. This is despite the fact that there were many campaigns over the years and many court cases.

We must not fall into any false narratives, when there were campaigns and there was support for the Gender Recognition Act.

I do not understand why there is such a campaign starting in 2021, when there was a review of the act in 2018.

Transgender people having their rights and their identity respected does not take rights or respect away from anyone else. This is a campaign that is fighting to take rights and respect away from people who have been denied it.

We must move forward and ensure that Ireland is a country that enshrines equality for all.

We must not regress and take hard-fought wins away from people.

Stephen Spillane

Wilton

Cork City

Where is the guilt in flying home?

The treatment of the two women who were arrested for allegedly refusing to enter hotel quarantine after returning from Dubai is very alarming.

Kirstie McGrath: one of the two women who were arrested for their alleged refusal to enter hotel quarantine.

During their court appearances, the private reason for their trip — cosmetic surgery, which they did not undergo — was reported.

The women, both mothers, would have been unable to pay the hotel fees and would not have been allowed to have their children with them. They were granted bail, but, unable to pay, they were incarcerated in Mountjoy prison. They have since been released into a hotel.

Was this tough treatment necessary?

Where is their ‘guilt’ in arriving home from a foreign land? They each had three Covid-19 tests in the previous week.

The laws of our land have become a plaything for airport security staff — and for the gardaí and courts — to be interpreted on an ad-hoc basis; and depending on who is to be ‘punished’. Will these draconian new laws be ditched as soon as Covid-19 is gone? Don’t hold your breath.

The new ‘criminals’ are all of us, going about our daily business, unaware we are all in danger of falling victim to the latest fad, the latest novelty justice.

Robert Sullivan

Bantry

Co Cork

Taxpayer will get bill for Dubai trip

On arrival at Dublin Airport from Dubai, two Irish women allegedly refused to quarantine in a hotel and were arrested.

Their solicitor said that they weren’t aware of the quarantine requirements. If that’s the case, they must be the only two people in the country who are not. Their trip, hotels, and cosmetic procedures were funded by relatives and friends. Since they weren’t aware of the quarantine requirements, they must also have been unaware of the 5km rule. From their addresses, it is clear that they had to travel well outside the 5km limit to reach the airport. Were they fined for that breach?

On arrest, they are entitled to free legal aid: ie, free to them, but not to the taxpayer.

Then, there’s an appeal to the courts, for which they must each have barristers — again free to them — and while they must fulfil the hotel-quarantine requirement, it is no problem if they cannot afford it, because there’s a waiver scheme, and the compliant taxpayer will be happy to foot the bill.

And those considerate lawyers, on behalf of the two ladies — and on behalf of all of us — are taking a constitutional challenge on the mandatory quarantine issue, and the taxpayer will pay the fees. The compliant taxpayers will have a huge bill when this pandemic is over, and, in the meantime, have to watch the dramas of the non-compliant.

J Kennelly

Inniscarra

Co Cork