Letters to the Editor: Heritage lost in milestones

Milestone decisions in the Republic that were originally handled and cared for by the minister for heritage are now given to 31 local authorities. The minister is now precluded from interfering. Picture: Denis Scannell

“For the want of a ha’porth of tar the ship was lost”

We need our archaeology for ourselves now and for future generations

In the year 2000, a milestone decision was made by our Government.

It was a unique year by anyone’s reckoning, leaving hundreds of our (literal) milestones in a terrible state. Milestone decisions in the Republic that were originally handled and cared for by the minister for heritage are now given to 31 local authorities. The minister is now precluded from interfering.

Many of our lovely milestones make our roadsides interesting for children because of their size. The milestones are also interesting for our tourists, who see miles as a distant measure in past as memory of the famine or great hunger where half of our population was forced flee to the country. Skibbereen is a case in point, yet the milestone at Wilton, Cork, that should read ‘Skibb 52’, ‘Cork 2’ and ‘Inish 14' (being Innishannon), is no longer legible after 18 years of neglect and heavy road traffic. The paint is flaking and trapping water on the cast iron while weeds cover this monument. 

The condition goes to say so much about ourselves and our past in particular, because it is replicated throughout the country and the 31 local authorities entrusted with a duty of care from the minister for heritage.

Millions were paid to create the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage and the elected members need to be more responsible and take more care and of our remaining heritage and monuments.

Tomás Ó Scannláin

Baile an Easpaig

Corcaigh

Agreeing the right for nature to exist

John Gibbons is quite right to draw attention to Ireland’s intervention in the “Swiss grannies case”. Our Government was forensic in marshalling the arguments against allowing the courts to interfere in what they say should be confined to the “democratic process”.

Ironically, the State’s presentation (an unofficial transcript of which we have put in our website library with a link to the court’s video) makes a compelling case for exactly that which Mr Gibbons seeks — a constitutional referendum.

The Irish intervention in the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights argued that legal challenges to a government’s alleged failures to take sufficient action “seeks to bypass the democratic process through which climate action must take place if it is to be legitimate and effective”.

“As the preamble to the convention recognizes, effective political democracy is one of the foundations on which the fundamental freedoms in the convention are maintained,” the submission states.

Noting that the issue of climate change is “one of the most complex, multifaceted, and sensitive challenges facing states today”, the submission said that: 

It follows that it is necessary for climate action to enjoy democratic legitimacy. Indeed, because climate action depends on the contribution not only of the government, but also the private sector and communities and citizens more broadly, it will only be effective with democratic support.

It is this democratic process that Mr Gibbons points out was the citizens’ assembly’s principal recommendation — “a series of changes to the constitution to ensure people have a right to a clean, healthy, and safe environment”.

In fact, then Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank Clarke made the same point in our Climate Case Ireland judgment of July 2020 which struck down the Government’s first national mitigation plan and focused on this issue.

In 2018, Justice Barrett of the High Court had, while refusing our challenge to the Dublin Airport runway extension, nonetheless ruled that the court recognised the “personal constitutional right to an environment that is consistent with the dignity and wellbeing of citizens at large”, writing that such an “indispensable existential right” arose from the Constitution.

Justice Clarke ruled that this definition was “impermissibly vague”. He observed that “in most of the states where a constitutional right in the environmental field has been recognised, same has been achieved by the inclusion of express wording in the constitutional instruments of the state concerned”. He concluded: “An ill-defined right to a healthy environment is either superfluous or lacking in precision and I would not suggest that a right as so described can be derived from the Constitution.

“The advantage of express incorporation is that the precise type of constitutional right to the environment which is to be recognised can be the subject of debate and democratic approval,” rather than relying on a decision of our courts.

If our Government’s dramatic support for democratic legitimacy in the Grand Chamber was genuine — and they really wish to close off our routes through the courts — their arguments only reinforce the necessity of bringing forward the recommended referendum on the “right to an environment” as a priority over all the proposed referenda. Otherwise, we will be left with no access to justice — and no access to our democratic rights to seek, as your correspondent puts it, “the fundamental right for nature itself to simply exist”.

Tony Lowes

Friends of the Irish Environment

Eyeries

Co Cork

No time like the present for sovereignty

The right to self determination of our country is a fundamental right and Britain’s claim to jurisdiction in the North of Ireland is a continuing violation of the sovereignty and integrity of our country. 

Some 25 years on from the Good Friday Agreement, the right to self determination holds true and should be respected by all. The only way this can happen is for Britain to withdraw all claims of sovereignty in any part of Ireland affording the space for Irish people to determine their own future at a dedicated forum. 

To begin that process, there is no time like the present.

Noel Harrington

Kinsale

Co Cork

The centre is shifting to the right

The political centre is shifting rightwards. Do not expect kindness toward the young, old, or vulnerable.

Hungary, Poland, Italy, Sweden, and Finland — all gone hard right. A flavour of Francoite fascism wafts across Spain. Anger and bitter protest drifts, with acrid smoke, across France adding points in popularity to the hard right National Front movement, long seeking to rule in France.

Which one — Spain or France — might first have a “near-fascist”, far, hard-right government? Citizens feeling offended and let down could vote extreme rightists into power. Where those on the further right reach power they strive to keep control. 

Under Franco between 1939 and 1975, when monarchy was restored, extreme rightists had guns in parliament. Salazar got pushed out in Lisbon in 1974 — another fascist regime clawing on to hold power. And who can forget January 6, 2021, in Washington DC?

Those on the harder right — despite facing ageing demographics — oppose immigration despite the need to have workers to cover work contributions toward pensions, risking their own pension pot. The wealthy 1% will buy what comfort they please in old age, unlike much of the other 99%. The wealthy have more options, more choice.

Given the US’s global lead in data-processing, storage, mining, and the cyber-dictatorship on display in China, we should hardly anticipate tenderness in old age.

Lengthening commutes or travelling in pursuit of paying work, changes out of job security toward more so a sort of gig economy employment model, and deficits in pay and conditions are making for more intensive and not easier work settings, in parts of France. 

It was easy for hard or extreme rightists to take on the mantle of grievance and to gain 80 seats to add to nine, come National Assembly elections in June 2022. Now, the far right adopt the mantle of grievance again as Emmanuel Macron pushes to move France’s pension age from 62 to 64. Protestors cite intensity of work careers to secure economic safety in old age. The National Front may gain a greying vote adding more to a wider voter base as the centre shifts rightwards.

Tom Ryan

Doon

Co Limerick

Sex education is moral and social education

Sarah Harte is entirely correct that the State has a duty to ensure that children receive a minimum of education, by Article 42.3.2 of the Constitution. This includes moral, intellectual, and social education.

Proper education about relationships and sex is both moral and social education. So the State can insist on this under two types of education, not only under one type.

I believe that the only article that the Association of Patrons and Trustees of Catholic Schools could believe gives a right to run their schools from a view based on religion is Article 44.2.5. This article is about a right to maintain institutions for religious and charitable purposes. It is time for the State to challenge, most likely in the Supreme Court, the idea that schools and hospitals, which are for the benefit of all the people, whether of one religion, or another, or none, is a religious institution.

A school is an educational institution, and a hospital is a healthcare institution.

Peter O’Hara

Rhebogue Road

Limerick City