Firstly, I wish to commend your article, Daniel McConnell Public will not stand for shifting the goalposts of Ireland’s ‘freedom day (Irish Examiner, October 23).
I am writing to you as a primary teacher, a member of the teaching council and the INTO.
I always thought of the INTO as a representative of the teachers and the children that they care for.
I am therefore amazed that the INTO is claiming to represent the views of its members and educational stakeholders when it calls for measures to reintroduce contact tracing, introduce antigen testing and to lower the age of mask mandates.
Not one of my colleagues, personally known to me, are looking for mask mandates, a return to contact tracing or the introduction of antigen testing.
Contact tracing, in our experience, has caused unnecessary hardship on teachers, students and their families.
For example, one teacher in our school had to leave her child with her elderly (vulnerable) mother while she came to work, as the child had been part of contact tracing in another school. Her child had no symptoms. The child was so distressed by the PCR test that it could not be completed and so she had to remain at home longer. The teacher involved spoke out on local radio about the unnecessary stress and hardship caused by contact tracing.
A child in my class recently spent two weeks in his bedroom as his mother tested positive for Covid. Again, he had no symptoms. Needless to say, his ability to function in the classroom after two weeks in solitary confinement was badly affected.
The people I know on the ground, parents and school staff, were delighted when contact tracing was removed and are horrified by the thought of children in masks. As we all know by now, children do not get seriously ill from Covid.
All teachers and staff who work with children have been given ample opportunity to avail of the vaccine which does not stop the spread but should protect against serious illness and hospitalisation so staff are not at risk.
Sinead Barrett
Ennistymon, Co Clare
Compare wages of public servants
In relation to the article How do Irish teachers’ wages compare with those in Europe? (Irish Examiner, October 25), I would love an article comparing the wages of other public servants in those countries, to wages earned in Ireland. Politicians, doctors, civil servants, police etc. The cost of living should also be taken into account.
Some useful comparisons would include those between class sizes, pupil teacher ratio (without including administrative/non-teaching principals and learning support staff). How long are international teaching staff retained? What’s their average length of service before burn out? What is access to children’s disability services, therapies etc. like?
Frances Shilling
Cork
Happy Halloween
For the first time in decades, I intend to wear a mask on Halloween.
Tom Gilsenan
Beaumont D.9
Check in with your neighbours
Covid has taken so much from us, yet it has given back to us our sense of community. Values once near extinction before we entered the reality that we are no longer too busy for our neighbour.
Memories get blurred with time just as time gets blurred by memories. Yet the lines of sacrifice remain uncovered behind our masks as we certify ourselves into a new world and wash our hands of the old. Where do we go to from here? I wish I knew. All I know is, I am mesmerised by the silk hands and shiny suits generating words constructed into making us feel grateful not for what we lost, but for what we had. We are all in this together, so the chorus goes. The lyrics that keep us together yet in reality have kept us apart.
It may be the authority that built the houses but it is the people who built the communities. The carpet of society I say, and when you lift it up from time to time you get to see the real foundations of who we are. Long Covid is something that affects the whole community with a disproportionate effect on the elderly. The realisation that a new normal remains and proposes to replace an existence for many with a virtual reality for life must be properly addressed by Government.
Pick up the phone – check in on your neighbour. You’ll be glad you did.
Darren Lalor
Tyrrelstown, Dublin 15
Tax waste at point of production
While it is unusual to find myself in agreement with Boris Johnson. His recent comments I would fully endorse, when he said that no amount of plastic recycling will compensate for a reduction in the quantity and quality of plastics we create.
This is why for almost a quarter of a century I have advocated a concept, where a proactive national waste management strategy should be introduced, based on the principle of taxation of waste at the point of production in contrast to the present situation where taxation on waste is not contemplated until it is about to be deposed. It is only under such circumstances, subject to the political will being exercised that consumers will be given the choice to determine the quantity and quality we create as a society.
Tadhg O’Donovan
Fermoy
Show urgency on vacant housing
The news that Ireland has the 10th highest housing vacancy rate in the world makes for depressing reading. Our 183,000 vacant homes (excluding holiday homes) could solve our homelessness problem and dramatically reduce the price of houses on the open market.
Many of these vacant properties are owned by global property and hedge funds who seek to bid up rental and purchase prices by constricting supply. At least a third are owned by older people who can no longer live in them and who need to be incentivised to make them available on the open market.
The Government claims it needs more information on why these houses are vacant before it can introduce a vacant property tax. This is a shallow excuse to continue to favour vacant and often absentee property owners over those who need homes to live in now. It’s like saying they need more information on why people work before it can introduce an income tax!
If a vacant property tax brought even half these 183,000 properties to market, it could reduce house prices and solve our housing crisis almost overnight. It’s time the Government showed some urgency on this issue and incentivised these homeowners to make their properties available on the open market to those who need them most.
Frank Schnittger
Blessington, Co Wicklow
Collective responsibility
We are headed towards probably the most consequential gathering of world leaders in living memory at Cop26. Here the publication of the carbon budget has already seen the expected backlash from those local vested interests for whom caps on emissions run counter to their profit motive.
Einstein once said that ‘Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind’, which might seem harsh when taken in the context of early 20th century global politics and the drive to shake off the yoke of imperialism, but seems quite apt now.
Global solidarity and an acceptance of scientific fact will be critically important in the coming weeks if humanity is to have any chance of maintaining a sustainable future on this planet.
We cannot continue to push for a business as usual growth model, with deluded hopes in yet to be invented technologies.
We are now in the middle of the climate and biodiversity emergency, politicians need to stop only looking at their next election and pandering to parochial and national self-interest. We all have a collective responsibility to contribute to the global cause of humanity, no more excuses.
Barry Walsh
Blackrock, Cork
Sanctions have led to suffering
Sanctions imposed by the US, the UN and EU have been causing the deaths of millions of people in the most impoverished countries of the world. Various humanitarian agencies within the UN have been highlighting the hundreds of thousands of children who have died as a result of such sanctions for many years.
The peoples of some of the most impoverished countries in the world are victims of these sanctions. Ireland is sitting silently on the UN Security Council that is helping to impose these murderous sanctions. By our silence we are complicit.
Edward Horgan
Castletroy, Limerick
Like something out of a movie
Who can forget that famous film scene in the café with Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal. I believe Liverpool supporters felt similar last Sunday, especially in the Man United box, when “Harry met Salah”.
Seán Kelly.
Tramore, Waterford
