Letters to the Editor: The show must go on at RTÉ
Siún Ní Raghallaigh at an Oireachtas media committe meeting in the wake of the initial furore about payments to Ryan Tubridy. File picture: Oireachtas TV
Columnist Terry Prone analysed (in her usual excellent way) Siún Ní Raghallaigh’s lengthy statement in your paper — ‘Ní Raghallaigh has fired an arrow into minister’s reputation’ (Irish Examiner, March 5).
The statement is very eloquent and forensic. But really and truly, what is the point of all this tit-for-tat at this stage in the game?
Clearly, truth be told, the chair of the RTÉ board and the minister did not enjoy a productive or fluent working relationship and in the end Siún Ní Raghallaigh resigned. That is her right and her privilege and that is the end of it — at least it should be.
The Government and RTÉ have better things to fixate upon. The show must go on. RTÉ needs to be put on a stable financial and political footing — and all sorts of important things have been elbowed off the newspapers and the national airwaves by this piffling personality-driven Lilliputian dispute. Enough already.
The evisceration by Siún Ní Raghallaigh of Catherine Martin, the media minister, shows there are always two sides to every story.
Her damning statement about the manner of her “enforced dismissal” leaves more questions than answers for the Green minister.
The allegation that the minister “traduced” this woman’s reputation, who in all conscience, and from reports, was attempting to steer the RTÉ ship back on course, is indicative of the dirty side of politics.
That Ms Ní Raghallaigh, unlike some in politics, owned her mistake and apologised, due to “a lapse in memory”, is refreshingly honest.
This bombshell four-page statement comes as a result of Ms Martin’s appearance on RTÉ’s Prime Time and two meetings held over 10 days ago. Those meetings where Ms Ní Raghallaigh admitted to giving wrong information, prior to the RTÉ interview, and correcting it, due to a failure in memory, was seen by the minister and department officials as an egregious offence that warranted the no confidence, non answer, by the minister on Prime Time.
The appearance and the infamous letter was the final nail in the coffin.
But like all things political this chapter isn’t completed yet with TDs on the Oireachtas committee and Dáil ready to pounce.
If Catherine Martin thought for a moment that Siún was going to be ciúin then she, her advisers, and department officials got it wrong.
Last year it was reported that the HSE will need an additional 2,575 doctors and 5,726 more nurses by 2035 — ‘More health workers needed to care for ageing Irish population’ (Irish Examiner, online, April 27).
But why are our newly qualified doctors and nurses emigrating, the answer is very simple, wages. Doctors in Australia earn AUD$200,000 (€122,000), they earn €75,000 here.
Nurses earn AU$65,000-AU$95,000 (€39,500-€58,000) in Australia, here we pay them between €35,000-€45,000. We can give hundreds of millions of euro to schemes in the North, which I don’t object to, not to mention other schemes elsewhere, but for crying out loud let us look after our own people first.
We have the money, we can well afford it, so let us stop hemorrhaging our own lifesavers.
Technology has changed our education system in many ways. It has its positives but it still has its negatives, such as: students getting distracted by laptops /playing games during class. Having ebooks on the laptop helps but if your laptop dies you’re left without a book. In my school we are the first year to have our own personal laptops everyday, although it’s very useful for things such as doing homework on it if you forget a copy, but it can get damaged, die or break and it costs a lot of money to fix which some people may not be able to afford.
So is it just better to stick to the old-fashioned pen and paper or is the future of technology helping education?
The continued domination of Donald Trump in the US election cycle and his potential to become the next US president is now a real prospect. He has stated he has no love of Nato or the EU. With that in mind I suggest it is now time to start a real peace process between Russia and Ukraine.
There is no possibility of a Ukraine victory. The citizens of Ukraine deserve to live in peace as do the people off Russia. Frankly, I am not a fan of the leaders of either country.
Ukraine needs to declare its neutrality and Nato must confirm it has no strategic interest in that country; Russia must immediately stop its war and declare it accepts the sovereignty of Ukrainian border.
This slaughter must stop immediately. It seems that the international politicians have a mindset which wants to continue. It is not their citizens are suffering.
All roads lead to Dublin apparently, if you look at a transport infrastructure map of Ireland, and what we have ended up with is half a wheel with every spoke — both road and rail — originating from a single point.
It’s no wonder we have ended up with a moribund capital city, while the rest of the country stagnates in their own sloughs of despond.
Perhaps our transport planners and the movers-and-shakers might like to take a lesson from nature and rethink the whole system based on the spider’s web.
Israeli, American, and Egyptian intelligence chiefs met in Paris to put the finishing touches on a plan to expel the Palestinians from Gaza.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF), which previously refused a loan of $3bn to Egypt, is about to provide Egypt with a $10bn loan for handling a potential deluge of Palestinian refugees that Israel seeks to ethnically cleanse from Gaza, thus bringing closer Netanyahu’s ambition of total Zionist possession of Palestine.
President El-Sisi says “Egypt is preparing a desert area with some basic facilities to shelter potential refugees” in the near future.
The Israeli army has continued its daily airstrikes on civilian sites in Rafah in order to intensify feelings of high-anxiety and panic that will help to trigger a stampede into Egypt. Food trucks are prevented from entering Gaza.
Israel is deliberately starving the Palestinians so they will flee their homeland as soon as there is an opening at the border.
All of these measures are aimed at one objective alone, the complete eradication of the Palestinian population. After a bloody four month-long military genocide campaign, Israel’s goal is clearly in sight.
It will take a monumental effort for countries with conscience and morality to stop this evil plan of Palestinian ethnic cleansing from going forward.
I believe that students shouldn’t have homework or at least less of it.
Homework was first introduced as a punishment but has been normalised since. I agree with the idea of homework being assigned as a punishment but students who are trying to get on with other activities outside of school shouldn’t be stuck with homework every night.
Homework can take hours out of a student’s day, it can also be extremely tiring and most of the time not that useful. I understand if it’s a project that you would need resources at home to complete but most homework given to students is just a repeat of work from class that could be completed in school, therefore not taking hours out of a student’s day.
Therefore, homework should be taken out of the school system apart from the exceptions I stated above. Average students have a six-hour school day, and it is unnecessary to add even more hours onto that.
