Letters to the Editor: Creating an independent national green energy industry is a no-brainer

One reader argues Ireland's energy production should not be in private hands, while others consider issues including obesity, abortion, supports for PhD candidates, and the RTÉ controversy

One reader writes that Ireland's energy security is not best served by further auction plans for the country's wind energy fields. Stock picture: Ben Birchall/PA

Further auction plans for our wind energy fields, placing the future of Ireland’s energy production in private hands, must be scrapped in favour of energy security for the nation.

With the energy crisis still in full swing and the people suffering outrageous demands on their income while the energy companies continue to bank huge profits, it takes a special kind of Government to continue to sign over our future energy production, with an assured revenue stream, to the private sector.

The decision to place our energy requirements in the hands of private individuals and company boardrooms will prove to be the most incomprehensible and damaging decision made by any government since the foundation of the State.

The consequences of this policy, which disenfranchises the citizens, will be seen to be grossly negligent, incompetent, and reckless in the extreme, while also denying our public purse huge secure ongoing revenues into the future.

This has been the modus operandi of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael for too many years and flies in the face of the principles of our Constitution on many fronts.

The continuing propping-up of these two most toxic of parties by a Green Party suffering from a severe case of tunnel vision bodes ill for the Greens and for the nation as a whole. Do they really believe that our goal of a clean environment will be served better by a private industry over which we will have little or no control and pay dearly for the ‘privilege’?

It is not too late and with corporation tax coming on stream, giving us the perfect opportunity for low-inflationary investment over the next five to 10 years, it’s a ‘no-brainer’ that we create a fully-independent national green energy industry.

Joe Brennan, Ballinspittle, Co Cork

Salary comparisons

What are salaries for top presenters in the likes of Denmark, or other countries with a similar population? Or in Germany, France, or Spain? Would public service staff get the same high salaries? 

Barry Creed, Granada, Spain

Overpaid at RTÉ

I can understand some sort of licence fee but not that an inspector calls to your house and then there are threats of legal action and prison.

To then see what actually happens to your €160 is a disgrace. There are too many people overpaid in RTÉ. There’s no quality there anymore for the money being paid out on wages — and don’t get me started on repeats.

Paul Carew, Killarney, Co Kerry

Martin must resign

Media Minister Catherine Martin allowed herself to be persuaded by RTÉ to approve the sudden shutdown of RTÉ’s long-wave radio service to the diaspora in April, without the long-promised and agreed replacement DAB radio service in Britain. Clearly the minister was happy to be RTÉ’s rubber stamp on a decision that has negatively affected the elderly Irish in Britain, while at the same time she did not act to ensure that RTÉ’s published expenditure on its talent was correctly reported.

This is a complete failure by her department to hold RTÉ to
account. She has no alternative now but to resign.

Richard Logue, Mill Hill, London

A very variable rate of financial change

Following on from the recent rate increase by the ECB, rates are rising across the banking sector by a different amount relative to the ECB and at a different speed. The retail banks seem to be more relaxed in relation to the increase due the amount of money they have on deposit. Non-bank lenders and credit-servicing firms owned and run by vulture funds increase their rate quicker.

These funds/credit-servicing firms have to honour existing contracts they have purchased, like tracker rate, variable, fixed rate, or any other options. It seems that some of them do not do what is on the contract. There is also no goodwill for customers to help by offering fixed interest rates like the retail banks. They just follow the ECB rate increase and have bigger margins.

This creates difficulty because these customers cannot switch banks and have no option but to stay. The ECB and Central Bank here should instruct these regulated firms to explain where their money is funded from so it can be compared to the retail banks’ funding and, importantly, their interest-rate increases. It should be clear if these credit firms or any others like them only have to follow the interest-rate increase by choice and therefore could also offer fixed-rate options if they chose to do so.

The Banking & Payments Federation Ireland (BPFI), the umbrella group for all of the above, should support it too. They have recently launched DealingWithDebt.ie in conjunction with Mabs. 

On a broader note, the regulators and legislators should be doing a lot more to ensure a reduction in the cost of living/inflation, which will in turn feed into a decrease in
interest rates. The main one is energy, which affects everything and is taking a long time to feed into the system, even though wholesale prices have dropped significantly. A lesson could be taken from recent reductions in milk, butter, and bread prices in May, when prices paid to farmers were reduced in March.

Name and address with the editor

Safeguard abandoned

I am almost at a loss for words to describe the recent decision by a majority of TDs to vote in support of a bill — the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) (Amendment) Bill 2022 — that would totally decriminalise abortion in all circumstances, allow for abortion on demand up the sixth month of gestation, and remove entirely the lifesaving three-day period of reflection. 

These provisions go way beyond what was recommended in the highly- flawed report on the operation of our existing abortion law and fly in the face of all assurances provided to voters during the referendum campaign.

Oireachtas members are radically out of step on this issue. Many ‘yes’ voters will be as appalled as I am that we have arrived so quickly at a point where safeguards are being abandoned in order to satisfy the legislative ambitions of abortion advocates who will not stop until the unborn child is left without even a shred of legal protection. The dreadful bill must be stopped.

Siobhan Nic Cathail, Contae Ros Comáin

The obesity swindle

Catherine Conlon (Analysis, June 26), takes a pontifical personal/professional stance on the obesity crisis, adopting the typical medicalising approach.

En route she quotes a post-doctoral researcher who has come up with the elaborate biomedicalised extrapolation that it is really a “hertiable neuro behavioural disorder that is highly sensitive to environmental conditions”.

One has to wonder if this is perhaps of some ‘viral’ origin which has mysteriously descended to pose a pandemic of obesity cases to the unwitting and unprepared populace. The capacity of the medical profession to conjure yet another diagnostic label for big pharma to ‘heroically’ rush in to address knows no bounds of decency or decorum.

Business is business, one presumes, so the hybridity link/entwinement of pharma to medic is forever boosted. Vested interest and self-preservation spring to mind.

It seems some commentators are now rashly heralding, with celebratory aplomb, the foisting of the obesity drug Ozempic on the first-world populations at large, as an antidote to the grossly overweight condition. So that’s it then. We can continue to be sanguine about the over-production and ubiquitous presence of processed foods, ever-burgeoning fast-food outlets, food-advertising overkill, and appalling dietary habits, because there’s a potential wonder-pill to obliterate any and all downsides ensuing. Not!

We all know the key predisposing factors to obesity. No secret there whatsoever.

Taking the foot off the preventative pedal by submitting to sham pharmaceutical counterbalance paves the road to ever-burgeoning perdition in this prime health crisis scenario, which is debilitating our very social-familial fabric.

Let’s all make a pact with ourselves to adopt a modicum of sanity in this zone and sustain a sliver of common sense to combat the “despairing catastrophism”, rather than be  swindled by ‘faux’ optimism being peddled by profiteering big pharma. Where have all the fresh food/self-discipline practices gone, to say nothing of good old physical exercise, that of the basic variety even?

Eat fresh and less/walk more and more. No need for conjured diagnoses and pill-popping.

Jim Cosgrove, Lismore, Co Waterford

Strike action welcome

On June 26, the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation, and Science published the first report of an Independent National Review of State Supports for PhD researchers.

This report had been welcomed by third-level institutions more readily than PhDs, however the results were more disappointing than previously imagined.

The report immediately diverts from the needs of PhD researchers calling for a living wage of greater than €28,000 per year, recommending an increase to €25,000. The report fails to address parental leave and pay, fails to address sick pay,

Critically, the report also fails to clarify the status of PhDs as employees rather than students. This report has not progressed the discourse regarding PhD rights in the slightest.

This report serves as another fictitious stopgap on the supposed road to progress.

It has done next to nothing to ensure PhDs are paid fairly for the work they contribute, can afford their bills, and non-EU PhDs are not burdened with supplemental healthcare and visa costs.

While another report is surely ordered, this provides universities with a prolonged period to bury their heads in the sand rather than act in support of their community, as they love to advertise themselves as doing.

The Postgraduate Workers Organisation, the collection of PhDs advocating for their peers, has warned strike action is to be considered. I for one welcome this news. For far too long have third-level institutions exploited eager and dedicated researchers. It is time enough for that to change.

Criodán Ó Murchú, Former postgraduate representative of Údarás na hOllscoile, Ollscoil na Gaillimhe