Letters to the Editor: Housing issues for the academic year

'The neoliberal approach of Minister Simon Harris and Minister Darragh O’Brien and this Government is part of the accommodation problem.'

The summer media attention around students and staff unable to find accommodation, and the consistent lack of action from the Government on this issue runs like clockwork each year.

Bearing the brunt of neo-liberal economic and social policies, students and staff are struggling and are being pushed into homelessness. We have seen students sleeping in cars, couchsurfing with friends, and dropping out of education, just as we have seen staff commuting for hours, unable to afford groceries and quitting academia.

We have to call a spade a spade. The neoliberal approach of Minister Simon Harris and Minister Darragh O’Brien and this Government is part of the problem. The Rent-A-Room scheme is indicative of the ideological limitations of Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, and the Greens. Not only is it landlord-led, echoing the blind trust in market forces that has characterised much of this coalition, but it worsens the housing crisis by driving up rents through its €14,000 per annum tax relief. All this for digs with no tenant rights that you get kicked out of on a Friday — this is the sorry state of the housing provision in Ireland.

Not just students and staff of academia; workers, families and pensioners alike are affected and being forced below the poverty line. This is a disgusting way to treat the people of Ireland, and this will be reflected in the upcoming elections. For our part, we will work to ensure that students are informed about the disgraceful behaviour of those in power.

TCDSU President, László Molnárfi; TCDSU Education Officer, Catherine Arnold; TCDSU Welfare Officer, Aoife Bennett; TCDSU Entertainments Officer, Olivia Orr; TCDSU Communications and Marketing Officer, Aiesha Wong

TCDSU Sabbatical Officers,

Trinity College Dublin, House 6

Dublin 2

Remembering ‘warrior’ Quirke

The untimely passing last year of Clonoulty Rossmore and Tipperary hurler, Dillon Quirke is remembered with great sadness by all who knew him.

At 24 years of age, Dillon had his whole life ahead of him and was destined to play a pivotal role for the Tipperary senior hurling team in the years ahead. In remembering Dillon on his anniversary, Martin Quinn has composed a poem in his memory titled A warrior through all his short years. He is making the poem available to the wider public as a memento of Dillon, with a small charge for each copy in support the important work of the Dillon Quirke Foundation.

Dillon Quirke passed away on August 5, 2022, during a club hurling match in Semple Stadium. Picture: Inpho/Bryan Keane

Copies of the poem are now available at €5 each, with all proceeds going to the foundation. Those who wish to obtain a copy of the poem or to order copies should contact Martin at [e-mail] or at 087 6101628. Any shop or business that wishes to have copies available can also get in touch with him.

This poem remembers Dillon for the “warrior” that he was, and on the occasion of his anniversary it is a very appropriate way of remembering him both on the field and off.

Martin Quinn

via email

Time to wake up and smell the slurry

This week John Gibbons ( Science is continually rejected by farm bodies. Who will shout ‘stop’?, August 1) told a few home truths ignored for far too long by far too many of us.

The routine but dishonest denials by the farm and food lobby on ongoing environmental destruction can only stand if we all look away and pretend that the green washing, especially by An Bord Bia, has some foundation in what science recognises as reality.

It will not be very long before a general election is called. When that happens, it will offer an opportunity to support candidates, from whichever party, who accept science rather than the shameful, voodoo tribalism seen at the recent hearing of the Oireachtas joint committee on agriculture.

There, Environmental Protection Agency staff were, astonishingly, treated as the enemy rather than an objective arm of the state responsible for protecting all citizens’ interests. That these attacks came from politicians, even if the committee chairman Fianna Fáil deputy Jackie Cahill is a dairy farmer, goes some way to explain why our environment is being destroyed and climate targets are missed.

That election might also afford an opportunity to, finally, appoint a farm minister who might represent the interests of all society rather than behave (as has been the convention) as a super lobbyist for the farm and food sectors.

Ironically but helpfully, Gibbons’s piece was published within hours of the RTÉ broadcast of The Seven Ages of Noel Browne which told the story of a politician once dismissed as a crank but vindicated and indeed celebrated by history. That excellent documentary offered lessons for our farming cousins if they do not want to suffer the fate of those, especially the Catholic hierarchy, who in Browne’s time dismissed science and imagined societies would not evolve.

They destroyed what they held dearest by burying their heads in the sand.

Farming and farmers are too important to Irish life to allow that happen, but unless the realities of our world — soaring heat, ever-more polluted water sources, accelerating species’ extinctions and raging forest fires — are honestly confronted then a grim fate awaits us all. Time to wake up and smell the slurry irrespective of its source.

Jack Power

Inniscarra,

Cork

Defence Force staff could run for office

Seán O’Riordan’s excellent piece, regarding the Defence Forces and the Working Time Directive and your editorial ‘Exclusion a dereliction of duty’ highlights once again the continuing failure by government to address the serious crisis in the Defence Forces.

In order to address the crisis of retention, conditions of employment and rewards must be fit for purpose, which clearly they are not. Pensions, for newer members also need to be reviewed and changed in order to retain personnel and reward members for their service to the State.

To date, Government has failed to address the many serious issues in the Defence Forces, with minimal action or urgency, and with a naval service almost on the point of collapse.

Maybe it’s time for Defence Force members, their families, and supporters to consider running pro Defence Force candidates in selected constituencies at the next local and general elections. With a greater Dáil representation maybe then will progress be made.

Conor Hogarty

Blackrock,

Co Dublin

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