Journeys of destruction are of our own making

Flames burn a forest in Vati village, on the Aegean Sea island of Rhodes on Tuesday. A third successive heat wave in Greece pushed temperatures back above 40 degrees Celsius across parts of the country on Tuesday following more nighttime evacuations from fires that have raged out of control for days. Picture: AP/Petros Giannakouris

The Faustian pact we’ve made, the one that may end our world is encapsulated in two simple facts. Ryanair made a profit of nearly €1.5bn last year. To sustain, or maybe improve that performance, the airline continues to fly passengers on a daily basis to Rhodes ... the Greek island that has, because of climate change, become an inferno.

Ryanair, just like our food and farm sectors, and most airlines, cannot but be seen as concepts in need of fundamental reform if Rhodes’ disaster is not to be eventually replicated around much of our world.

It is natural that these businesses resist reform made urgent by climate change, but it is not natural that consumers blindly support those positions. If government, as most do, keep kicking that infamous climate can down the road then consumers will have to recognise and change their essential part in this self-destructive fantasy.

Jack Power

Inniscarra

Cork

Unsafe in Dublin — even in daylight

I lived in Dublin city centre for 10 years between 1992 and 2002. I never felt unsafe. I often walked home late at night and of course there were routes you wouldn’t sensibly take after closing time.

I have been in the city centre on numerous occasions in recent years where I have felt less comfortable — even in the middle of the day. I know the city well and I do not mean to be alarmist. But drug-dealing and drug use are clearly visible to the untrained eye in the middle of the city, including the area immediately adjacent to the Four Courts and Christchurch. 

O’Connell Street and its tributaries have become places you traverse rather than visit. It is especially disconcerting to see groups of teenagers with nothing good on their minds trolling passers-by, eyeing them up and accosting them with impunity. This has on occasion culminated in very serious assaults.

Dublin is one of the great European cities. Its culture, humour and the ease with which metropolitan grandeur and local community combine in Dublin is a very special thing. But Molly Malone’s wheelbarrow is missing a wheel at the moment. There is a sense of half-evacuated lawlessness in the air there at times since the pandemic dislocated us and this emergent problem needs to be urgently addressed before it beds down and spreads.

Michael Deasy

Bandon

Co Cork

Social deficits lead to immoral society

The attack on American tourist Stephen Termini in Dublin is all the more harrowing given that Stephen, a musician and artist with a deep affinity for Ireland, had been saving up hard for this visit, only to end up in intensive care.

This appalling incident clearly calls for greater police-presence on our streets, a move requiring more investment, resources and support for our gardaí. The problem is much deeper, however, as no police force can make people do the right thing.

Some will point to the waning of spiritual influences in Irish life but surely, even without external moral guidance, all of us have an ingrained sense of ethics that distinguishes right from wrong? Others will say more education is needed but as an ex-teacher, I know that teachers already encourage and facilitate respect, care and compassion in their classrooms and beyond.

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A large part of the explanation, of course, is societal and we are all responsible for that. Factors such as poverty, low self-esteem, insufficient recreational facilities, and inadequate supports for those who need them.

None of this, however, exonerates the alleged attack on a visitor to our shores. And ultimately the incident boils down to a total absence of empathy for the plight of another human being.

While Stephen Termini is being treated in Beaumont Hospital, there is a distressed family on the other side of the Atlantic. But sympathy is not enough. Surely on this occasion, the Irish state should help this family financially to be reunited and accommodated nearby so that they can be of support to their relative in his hour of need?

After all, this is Ireland of the welcomes, of the ‘céad míle fáilte’ — or is it?

Sinéad Boland

Co Wicklow

Magnificent hurling

Kilkenny hurlers have given me some of the best days in my 70-plus years.

So as the game slipped away from us on Sunday, I was far from enjoying my latest visit to Croke Park, but I did begin to sit back and admire this magnificent Limerick team, it’s standard of hurling, and the propriety of all involved.

Michael Gannon

Saint Thomas Square

Kilkenny

A history of hate

Fergus Finlay in his column — ‘We need to recognise the recent acts of hate for what they truly are’ (Irish Examiner, July 18) — gives a valid warning for today about how Nazi students back in the 1930s burned books which they misguidedly considered un-German.

But historical books which also warn us about how people can find themselves being sadly burnt at the stake or more recently another distraught generation getting killed in gas chambers as the Nazis tragically did to many Jewish people don’t have to be set alight by anyone. This is because these books, I believe, have their own power to self-burn by themselves.

Whenever someone just opens these historical books about crimes of genocide then these books can, I believe, create their own flames and go on to leave a necessary warning scorch mark in the minds of a new generation of open-minded readers. This warning mark of knowledge which has been got at a cost which only God can measure ought to truly never fade away from the thoughts of such new readers as they go on their own journey into an uncharted future.

Sean O’Brien

Carnanes South

Kilrush

Co Clare

Non-lethal weapons

When interviewed recently in Kiev and, again, on his return to Dublin, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar spoke of Ireland providing Ukraine with substantial amounts of ‘non-lethal weapons’.

Whatever the merits of standing with Ukraine against Russian imperialism, I understood Irish neutrality restricted this state to providing non-lethal aid.

Has Irish foreign policy silently changed?

Can Mr Varadkar tell us what exactly a non-lethal ‘weapon’ is? And does our supply of weapons mean we are now a participant in this conflict?

We really need to know. This is not a small thing.

Fintan Lane

Lucan

Co Dublin