What a dilemma: Our government must decide, before the next budget, how to spend the €6bn or so provided by soaring corporation taxes. This process will of course be objective and unrelated to short-term electoral ambitions.
In those circumstances, it may be time to begin a serious conversation about tidal barriers to try to repel rising seas as nearly all our cities are built on estuaries and face changing circumstances that make today’s floods look almost irrelevant within the lifetime of today’s minor hurlers. One projection focused on Cork suggested that the high tide mark would be at the traffic lights outside Ashton School on the Blackrock Road shifting the banks of my own lovely Lee dramatically.
That societies have misbehaved in ways that make rising oceans inevitable means such investment is entirely justified and sensible. That means it is more an obligation than an option really. That this society is relentlessly increasing its carbon emissions, despite all the warnings and promises, adds a do-or-die urgency to this suggestion.
What odds the idea, and its urgency, will even be mentioned in the conversation?
Jack Power
Inniscarra
Cork
Tragic memory of boy on book cover
In Michael Moynihan’s column — ‘Frank O’Connor’s book cover images show Cork life through a lens’ (Irish Examiner, May 11), he mentions the cover photograph of An Only Child. He described it as showing “a child in short pants and sensible jumper contemplating Shandon — from Bell’s Field?”.
He added that a couple of correspondents suggested to him that the boy in the photograph was maybe still in Cork. Unfortunately, he is not.
The boy was a classmate of mine in primary school (the North Mon) and it being a large class (maybe 45 boys) and a long time ago I do not recall his name — maybe Gleeson?
The photograph was taken (without his knowledge at the time) while he was playing in some old houses that lined the steps that went from the Watercourse Road (by the brewery) up to Bell’s Field.
A number of years later the poor boy fell through the asbestos sheet roofing of the vacant distillery building further along the Watercourse Road while trying to catch pigeons to keep and train. A tragic accident a long time ago.
Tomas McCarthy
Houston
Texas
Judge governance by the fruit it bears
I can empathise with Kieran McNulty — ‘Crowning of king is now just old hat’ — (Irish Examiner, letters, May 5). Much of my life I also ascribed to the notion that the history of human government was some sort of linear “evolutionary” progression from less “enlightened” forms of government like medieval monarchy, to republican democracy.
With mature reflection, I am not so sure. I have come to believe that the precise form of government is of less importance than the fruit it bears. The examples Mr McNulty gives in support of his argument against monarchy demonstrate this truth:
After the English Civil War in the 1640s, under Oliver Cromwell, parliament’s dour puritanism banned even singing and dancing. His virulently anti-Catholic son-in-law Ireton explained his slaughter of Catholic Irish children along with their families as ‘nits make lice’. Charles II was welcomed back as king by jubilant crowds. The English remember it not as ‘The Republic’ but ‘The Interregnum’ (the period between monarchs).
The French Revolution? There isn’t space here to catalogue the horrors and absurdities perpetrated by the citizens’ National Assembly of the Revolution. Sure, they abolished medieval feudalism, but oversaw a Reign of Terror in which tens of thousands of their suspected enemies were guillotined in an orgy of unbridled violence. It is this period of history that gives us the word ‘terrorism’. It effectively ended with the coronation of Napoleon Bonaparte.
It was as a republic with a president that Americans (as they are now known) continued with the institution of slavery until the 1860s, and conquered the West at gunpoint. Oglala Chief Red Cloud once said “they made us many promises … but they never kept but one; they promised to take our land, and they took it”.
In my lifetime there have been many countries with the name “People’s Democratic Republic of [insert name of country]” which — apart from their ‘republican’ form — were none of these things.
The truth is, kings in the Middle Ages were rarely as autocratic as popular history and film paints them. The reality was far more complex. They were generally unable to rule without the co-operation of the nobles and later, parliament. Various charters such as the 1215 Magna Carta limited their power.
The moral authority of the Catholic Church also acted as a brake on the ambitions and greed of some kings as long as European countries remained mostly Catholic, a state of tension often existing between temporal rulers and the Church. In short, kings were not simply free to act as they pleased, there were many different constraints on their power.
A badly run republic with an ignorant electorate is infinitely worse than a good enlightened monarchy.
Any democracy is only as robust as the people that vote for it; people have shown themselves time and again as quite capable of voting in all kinds of inhuman horrors if so persuaded by the demagogues.
Surely at the end of the day, the purpose of any form of government should be the true happiness and welfare of people, and the precise form of government less a matter of concern than the achieving of this end?
Nick Folley
Carrigaline
Co Cork
Regulate cannabis for personal use
I am writing in response to an editorial — ‘Cost of Cannabis Decriminalisation Unclear’ (Irish Examiner, May 8).
The article confuses decriminalisation and legalisation which are two different approaches to personal drug use. Decriminalisation means the person will no longer be convicted for personal possession of cannabis, yet cannabis will remain an illegal substance and in the hands of criminal empires. Legalisation on the other hand also removes a conviction for personal possession, but it would also permit cannabis to be sold in shops or grown by social clubs for its members, removing it completely from the criminal world.
The article goes on to quote Dr Nora Volkow, director of the US National Institute on Drug Abuse, as a supporter of retaining the status quo for personal possession of cannabis, where in fact Dr Volkow has written about the damaging impacts of punishment for drug possession.
Additionally, the article refers to “deregulation of cannabis” which is a misleading word choice. Cannabis currently is an unregulated and illegal product, as the government hold no power or control over the product. Responsible regulation of cannabis would mean safety standards, age access controls, and overall ensuring a safe product for consumers. The idea of responsible regulation is increasingly important, especially given the prevalence of contaminated products and the rise in synthetic contamination of cannabis products.
Natalie O’Regan
Ballyphehane
Cork
DUP out of focus on the NI protocol
Jefferey Donaldson should be aware that he no longer speaks for the majority in Northern Ireland, the same majority who support the protocol and the businesses who see the protocol as protection from the disastrous effects of Brexit or the farmers who sell their produce directly to the Republic. The fact is Northern Ireland is no longer as British as Finchley.
It is quite clear the DUP is out of focus; the protocol is here to stay.
Noel Harrngton
Kinsale
Co Cork
Pope pontificating on procreation
Regarding the Pope urging Italians to have more children: Surely it is a bit rich for a celibate, who bans his priests and nuns from lovemaking, to tell other folk to make up for his and his fellow religious lack of procreating.
This, of course, would have nothing to do with divorce laws which would allow the division of church property/assets which are zealously guarded by the Vatican bean counters.
Geoffrey Collins
Knocknagoshel
Co Kerry
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