Letters to the editor: Propaganda persists that 26 counties is nation of Ireland

The people living in the northeast have been left at the mercy of a foreign power that implemented a brutal sectarian apartheid in that part of our country

Armed British soldiers on patrol in Lisbon Street, Belfast, during 1972, a result of partition 50 years earlier.

As we reflect on the dignified commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the slaughter of innocent civil rights marchers on Bloody Sunday by the British state in Ireland we must double our efforts for truth and accountability for these terrible deeds.

A day after this commemoration the Irish representative on the United Nation Security Council Geraldine Byrne Nason spoke on the important issue of removing the tensions between Russia and the Ukraine.

One part of her statement left me stunned as she boasted: “Earlier this month, Ireland marked 100 years of a hard-won independence. Just as we would not accept another state determining our foreign and security policy, Ukraine similarly has the sovereign right to choose its own policies.”

This shameful misrepresentation of our history needs to be challenged. A century ago Britain’s then prime minister David Lloyd George threatened an “immediate and terrible war” on the Irish people if the Irish delegates refused to accept the treaty which would annex the north east of our country and leave the remaining partitioned 26 counties a dominion of the British empire.

This was just the beginning of a terrible tragedy when the new Free State government accepted the interference of a foreign power in the affairs and security of our nation. They then turned on the Revolutionary Army who had fought for that hard-won freedom because of their refusal to surrender any part of our country.

British military support (weapons and finance) then helped the Free State government to win the terrible civil war which would shamefully cement 100 years of British misrule in Ireland.

Geraldine Byrne Nason, Permanent Representative of Ireland to the United Nations. Picture: United Nations

The people living in the northeast of Ireland know only too well how the past and current successors of the civil war have left us to the mercy of a foreign power that implemented a brutal sectarian apartheid in this part of our country.

The final insult to the truth is how this political elite continue to promote the propaganda that the 26 counties is the nation of Ireland.

Michael Hagan

Dunmurry

Co Antrim

Doughnut effect is destroying our cities

The ‘doughnut effect’ caused by poor urban planning is evident all over Ireland. Residential accommodation in inner cities is being taken over by students and short-term, transient singletons.

Families have been compelled to move out of city centres — because of high rents and the high cost of suitable houses — to the suburbs with businesses, supermarkets, and schools following.

Soon our city centres will be just become venues for hen and stag parties, student clubbing on weekdays, and Airbnb clients taking over badly needed housing at weekends.

This is what Edward Glaeser in his book Triumph of the City warns us about. As families move further out into the suburbs and rural areas, public transport becomes less viable, public services become stretched, and working parents have less time to spend with their children.

City-centre small businesses won’t survive due to low footfall and the stores will close. Is this what we want?

Nuala Nolan

Bowling Green

Galway

Hospital apology just managing reputation

I write in response to two articles by Eoghan Dalton regarding serious allegations of misconduct against Dr Brendan McCann, ED consultant in University Hospital Waterford (UHW) — Waterford hospital apologises over consultant’s ‘completely unacceptable’ behaviour and Two more women get apologies over treatment by Waterford hospital consultant   (Irish Examiner, January 25 and 26).

For full disclosure I have worked in UHW as a medical specialist registrar.

These apologies from management are pathetic, disingenouous, and insincere. There was a woman who was treated horrificaly by the Metropolitan Police in UK who said it best: ‘When apologies are unaccompanied by system change, all you are doing is reputation management.’

I think it is important to clarify whether the women involved have received personal apologies from the consultant, whether he is still A&E clinical lead, what is being done by UHW management and the HSE in response to these repeated inappropriate outbursts.

Patrick Mulkerrin

Taylors Hill

Galway

Democracy is being dragged into disrepute

In the British House of Commons we are witnessing bilious obfuscation, “lawyerly democracy”, and the abolition of facts. We do the same thing in this country whenever powerful people or institutions are caught out. In comes a squadron of lawyers. A byzantine and glacially slow external mechanism is devised. Parliament is paused and muzzled — and the powerful bring democracy into disrepute. This repetitive pseudo-legal and pseudo-democratic sleight of hand is destroying public trust in some crucially important institutions.

Michael Deasy

Bandon

Co Cork

Out-of-control gun culture across Ireland

Considerable media coverage was accorded to a court case involving a deer hunter who went berserk with a high-powered rifle, opening fire at random, and endangering the lives of gardaí and innocent members of the public.

Luckily nobody was injured as result of this incident, but I believe it highlights yet again the dangers of an out-of-control gun culture. There’s scarcely anywhere in Ireland you can avoid hearing gunfire as people with a liking for firearms feel the need to target a bewildering array of bird and animal species.

The bullet hole on the windscreen of the garda car shot at by Stephen Dowling in Donegal.

We shouldn’t forget that a proclivity for turning living creatures into bloody carcasses can desensitise the “sportsperson” who takes up this hobby.

I’m not suggesting that anyone who hunts animals should be treated as a pariah, but we need to face up to the proverbial elephant in the room (if it hasn’t been shot by a trophy hunter) when we debate issues relating to violence and the lack of gun control.

John Fitzgerald

Callan

Co Kilkenny

Retirement clauses in employment contracts

I read with interest the article — Protect pension age at 66, recommends Oireachtas committee (Irish Examiner February 2).

A joint Oireachtas committee on social protection, community, and rural development issued a report that recommended “that legislation be developed to ban the use of mandatory retirement clauses in employment contracts”. While this report is now to go before our national legislators for consideration. I would respectfully suggest that in the public interest, the above recommendation should first go before the Supreme Court for deliberation on the following grounds:

Where age limits are specified in contracts of employment for retirement purposes, are not these same contracts unconstitutional as they discriminate on the grounds of age.

Tadhg O’Donovan

Fermoy

Co Cork

Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians

In the light of Amnesty International’s recent damning report showing that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid against the Palestinian people it is long past time that the international community stops granting Israel impunity for its crimes. The Amnesty report states: “Israel imposes a system of oppression and domination against Palestinians across all areas under its control: in Israel and the OPT, and against Palestinian refugees, in order to benefit Jewish Israelis. This amounts to apartheid as prohibited in international law. Laws, policies and practices which are intended to maintain a cruel system of control over Palestinians, have left them fragmented geographically and politically, frequently impoverished, and in a constant state of fear and insecurity.”

This appalling situation cannot be allowed to continue, indeed it is unconscionable it has for so long, despite the evidence of Israel’s decades long persecution of Palestinians, what a stain on all governments enabling this.

Zoë Lawlor

Coordinator, Gaza Action Ireland

South Circular Road

Limerick