Letters to the editor: A mother gone but never forgotten

Even decades after she passed away, the woman who reared us will never be far from our thoughts

Mother's Day is a special day when we should cherish the role of the most important person in every family.

I no longer buy cards or presents for my mother on Mother’s Day, as unfortunately she passed away 30 years ago. But I often think about her, not just on Mothers Day. I think of the woman widowed, with two children and another born five days after her husband died. Left without a husband or a home, she reared us in a rented room in another family’s house, as was often the norm at the time, until she got a house of her own. She was both father and mother to us, took whatever work was available, scrimped and scraped to ensure our survival. Nothing was ever wasted, she was recycling before the word was invented. She neither drank nor smoked, she loved her garden and I think she was happy with the way we all turned out. Her name was Nora and she was the best mother that we could have wished for.

John Higgins

Ballina

Co Mayo

Where are proud, young Russians?

The massacre of the people of Ukraine must be one of the darkest chapters in human history. The spectacle of teeming lines of young anguished mothers dragging their
terrified little children away into the unknown, leaving their homes, their husbands and everything that means anything to them in life, is unspeakable cruelty. Everything that nourishes life — schools, hospitals, trees, birds, blossoms — all being destroyed in their wake.

There is no limit to the suffering that’s happening at the command of one man — deliberate, targeted havoc and the world looks on. Sadly sanctions for all their intent do little to heal the wounds in the broken little bodies of young innocent children despite all the efforts of medical staff with defeat and despair written all over their faces.

I’m constantly being reminded of the sheer exasperation of Henry VIII, when speaking of Thomas Becket, uttering the following: “In the name of God who will rid me of this damned priest?”

Can I say, in the name of God, where are the proud, young Russians whose ancestors gave to the world the grace and beauty of the Bolshai Ballet, the powerful intellects of Chekhov, Dostoevsky, and Solzhenitsyn, the delightful music of Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky?

With a history and heritage like that, how can they fail to stop the current barbarity that is leaving such an indelible black stain on the history of their generation?

Máirín Quill

Wellington Road

Cork

Government is doing nothing

Instead of merely predicting more painful inflation, why don’t the ESRI and Government prevent this from happening? The Government is doing nothing to protect their own people from being flayed alive.

The tiny crumbs we got in the last budget weren’t enough to meet the inflation of several years ago, never mind inflation as it was last winter!

Today is the first time I EVER had to buy heating oil in cans!

Florence Craven

Bracknagh

Co Offaly

Indian neutrality provokes disgust

All my life I have greatly admired India and especially its independent but active, engaged, and constructive role in world affairs. Indian Air Force Canberra Jets were vital in protecting the Irish UN battalions in Congo in 1960-64 where they and their infantry brigades served under the Irish UN Force Commander, LTG Sean MacKeown.

Universally inspiring and rightly admired figures like not only Gandhi but also Nehru were beacons to all humanity. Many here see Ireland and India as naturally belonging together — and maybe again in the Commonwealth. We can also be delighted that a son of an Indian doctor here, Dr Leo Varadkar, could not only be elected to lead a major party, Fine Gael, but also be elected head of the Irish government. And I recall him proudly talking about the active role which some members of his own family played in winning freedom for India from the old British Empire.

What would Gandhi think of India's stance on Russia's invasion.

Many felt utterly betrayed by the Indian government when it refused to condemn the brutal and absolutely unjustifiable Russian invasion of Ukraine and merely abstained in the UN General Assembly vote. That vote was a defining moment for the world and for India. India committed a gross betrayal of all that the great Nehru stood for. The 43m people in Ukraine today have no less right to freely refuse to submit to Putin’s new Russian Empire than had India — or Ireland — to leave the old British Empire.

The Indian government’s “neutrality” has rightly evoked utter disgust among those who, before this, had really admired that great country, and all it had represented. It’s now no longer an outstanding beacon of both freedom, and of global leadership, but sadly now only of betrayal.

And even if India rightly fears future military threats from both Pakistan and China, then top-rank military equipment is also made and supplied by other nations than Putin’s Russia — like France or UK, and not only USA. There is simply no excuse for their betrayal of those two sacred and universal principles — of both national self-determination and of peaceful resolution of international disputes.

Tom Carew

Ranelagh

Dublin 6

War games

It’s a pity that Joe Biden wasn’t active in mid-1945, or he could have warned the world about the imminent threat by the US to use nuclear weapons on Japanese civilians.

Liam Power

Blackrock

Dundalk

Co Louth

Leaders must know what people want

Fr Iggy O’Donovan, a “hurler of renown himself”, commends Taoiseach Micheál Martin on his “leadership during recent crisis’.

I would say, taking into account the number of “advisers” and “assistants” available to the Taoiseach (and ministers), Kathy Barry would have done an excellent job in the role of taoiseach.

For the benefit of those not familiar with Cork, Kathy Barry was alleged to have run a particular establishment in Cork City where it was alleged alcohol was available without appropriate licence, so basically Kathy Barry knew what the people wanted.

I would also suggest Kathy Barry would not allow the hospital waiting list to have built up, or patents seeking support for children with “special needs”, in addition to the “housing crisis” that politicians allowed develop.

Kathy Barry looked after the people.

Michael A. Moriarty

Rochestown

Cork

Those were the days

Watching episodes of The Way We Were and those dance hall scenes reminds me of Bray’s Arcadia ballroom, and my dancing there one night with an English (rather posh) girl.

She commented that the place reminded her of a railway station, and wondered what on earth I was doing there.

“I’m waiting for a train” says I. For some strange reason it sent our brief encounter completely of the rails.

Tom Gilsenan

Beaumont

Dublin 9