Letters to the Editor: EV charging challenges in rural towns
'I shared my challenging time with other EV drivers online and I found out from many drivers that I am rather naïve to expect a reliable and dependable charging service in a rural town such as Mallow.'
I believe Mallow is an electric vehicle (EV) backwater; I drive (an electric car) from Dublin to care for a relative in my home town of Mallow every fortnight.
I often plan on my visit to recharge my car in the town.
There are four charging stations, two long-term chargers supplied by Electric Ireland, one in the awkwardly situated Tesco car park and the other at the train station. The other two are organised by Easy Go, one at Lidl and the other at Dano’s Centra.
The Electric Ireland chargers, though slow, often have a wait time of four to six hours and are reliable. The Easy Go stations are often inoperable returning no charge.
On May 17 both the Easy Go stations were not charging and to make my charging dilemma worse only one Electric Ireland station was available and working at the train station. This took four hours plus a half hour walk back to my house either side of the charge.
This is often a repeated — and frustrating — experience for me every time I try to charge my car in Mallow.
If I fail 50% of the time it is an unreliable charging service; think of the doubt it creates each time.
It does not encourage confidence.
I shared my challenging time with other EV drivers online and I found out from many drivers that I am rather naïve to expect a reliable and dependable charging service in a rural town such as Mallow, that most EV drivers rely only on charging stations adjacent to motorways.
I am sharing their realistic if depressing opinion with your readers.
Are Mallow and other rural towns — far from motorways — not entitled to a reliable and dependable EV charging system?
I worked in Dublin city centre in 1974. I was 22 and was having a few Friday after-work drinks in the city on the day of the bombings.
I had little intention of going to last week’s Mass in the Pro Cathedral or to the following wreath-laying ceremony. I feared a level of hypocrisy and hijack of the day by a State which has not investigated this atrocity to any acceptable level.
Consequently, I arrived in Talbot Street at around 9am. I went into the little cafe beside the memorial for a bite to eat.
I got chatting to one of the relatives’ organisers and a nice chap from the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Then Cathy Doyle-Ellis arrived. She told me that her sister, two infants, and husband all perished in the blast.
“You’re going to the Mass?” she asked me. “Yes.”
“Good. It’s on at half 10.” The bishop said Mass. He read out the 34 names of the dead. Slowly, with respect.
The bishop did not stray too far from the church liturgy regarding the dead and bereavement.
But he strayed far enough.
Justice needs to be done, he said. Questions need to be answered.
The Mass was dignified. I do not know of any better way to show collective solidarity and support to the bereaved.
I returned to Talbot St. As at the Mass, a good crowd was there.
It was clear to me that the families were front and centre. They ran the show; their representative chaired the proceedings. And he welcomed the great and the good on at least equal and level terms.
I think everyone knew that justice still awaits service. Our President did speak very well.
He fully acknowledged the lacks. He fully acknowledged the absence of cooperation from Westminster.
Drawing lines under matters is not good enough; moving on is not an option when justice has not been served, he said.
Yes. It’s election time. Yes. Loads of political flesh was present. But mayhap not on show. All of us were quietish.
I was glad I went. I was glad I stayed on. As a nation; as a democracy, we now need to achieve justice for the forgotten. It is what they are entitled to.
At a time of heightened concerns regarding defence across Europe and with the continuing decline of our Defence Forces, the need for greater political oversight of the defence portfolio is perhaps greater now than at anytime in the history of the State.
Micheál Martin is Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence along with his other role as leader of Fianna Fáil and Tánaiste. He simply cannot devote enough time to adequately oversee the Department of Defence. He should consider making greater use of minister of state for defence Jennifer Carroll McNeill but unfortunately no powers have been delegated to her so it would appear she has no role to play. Given the urgent need to address the crisis in the Defence Forces, surely it would make sense to allow her some meaningful role in the administration of the Department of Defence.
When it comes to addressing the serious deficiencies regarding the defence and security of the State, party politics should have no part to play.
Minister Jennifer Carroll McNeill is a highly competent individual and her undoubted talent needs to be put to use in the service of the State.
I was recently copied with a “farewell to the troops” letter from the current Defence Forces chief of staff, Corkman Sean Clancy, which was in wide circulation.
In essence, the letter contained details of his pride and delight at his election as the chairman of the European Union Military Committee, by his fellow chiefs of staff across 27 member states, and General Clancy spoke of his personal pride and that such election acknowledged the “standing and regard of the Irish Defence Forces”.
It is ironic, and indeed puzzling for me, that when the secretary general of the Dept of Defence Jacqui McCrum, recently flew to Bucharest to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) she was surrounded at the oval table by generals, admirals, and officials of the Romanian armed forces, with no sign whatever of any officer from the Irish Defence Forces in her entourage. Where was General Clancy, our chief of staff, or for for that matter, any of the general staff officers?
Why was our Defence Minister not present for such an auspicious occasion, or was he aware of the travels of the secretary general, who is not elected by the people?
Apparently, Ms McCrum did in fact bring a young Irish Defence Forces captain — in civies; why civies? And was this young captain in a bag carrying role?
Ms McCrum is on record as stating — in the not too distant past — “that General Sean Clancy was the man that she had chosen to assist her in bringing the Irish Defence Forces to new levels”.
The ‘grapevine’ jury has already returned its verdict, and it is not pretty.
Peter Keenan says we “must contextualise” scripture (‘Biblical texts must be contextualised’, , Letters, May 6).
Yes, an understanding of cultural context, language style, and so on is important to scriptural study. But while Mr Keenan describes it as a ‘caricature’ on my part to say he is claiming the gospels ‘are so much falsehood’ the core of Mr Keenan’s argument is still that the New Testament does not claim or support the view that Jesus was the divine Son of God.
As this flies directly in the face of 2,000 years of key Christian Biblical teaching — from Catholic to Orthodox and Coptic to Protestant — is it is hard to understand his claim in any other light.
Likewise, his claim that the AD325 Council of Nicaea ‘almost’ settled the question of the divinity of Jesus: no, it settled it, as the wording of the Nicene Credo makes clear.That Jesus is the divine son of God is not ‘my thesis’ as Mr Keenan says, but a central thesis of all Christianity. So it is hardly credible that ‘the vast majority of reputable Protestant and Catholic biblical scholars and theologians’ essentially doubt that Jesus said what he said or was the divine Son of God as Mr Keenan implies.
Non-Christian Jewish midrash commentators on the Gospels in the secnd century AD were starting from the a-priori assumption that Jesus was not the divine messiah, so it is hardly surprising if they sought wrongly to interpret the Gospels in a way that aligned with this belief.
This does not make their interpretation correct. If it were, the central thesis of Christianity would be null and void, a point no less an author than St Paul makes crystal clear (eg, 1 Corinthians 15:14). In modern times efforts by the Catholic Church to seek a rapprochement with Judaism has been eagerly seized on by some people to mean the Church has changed its teachings on the nature and mission of Christ. It has not.
The view that the Word of God essentially cannot be relied on is nothing new — it can be found at the very start of the Bible, in Genesis 3:4 where the Serpent tells Eve to doubt God meant what He said.
In short, sometimes we even need to ‘contextualise the contextualising’.
