Letters to the Editor: Why I will not put my name forward for presidency

Áras an Uachtaráin, the official residence and principal workplace of the President of Ireland, in Phoenix Park, Dublin. Picture: Getty

After a period of reflection, I have decided not to seek a nomination for the presidential election.

My thanks to those who encouraged me to answer Ireland’s call, not for any leadership skills, values, vision, pride in the jersey, etc, on my part but for the free digs when they’re up for the Kerry football matches.

The Government has all the executive powers, so I’d be spending my days hosting garden parties and walking the dogs. Micheál, Simon, Mary Lou, and the TDs would have all the fun jostling over housing, health, criminal, and global issues, while I’d be a powerless oddity with a peripheral role.

I’d be bored to tears in the opulent 95-room mansion. I’d have servants and military aides-de camp fussing all over me and a vintage chauffeur-driven 1947 Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith landaulette and Mercedes-Benz S-Class saloon to transport me to ceremonial events.

I’d have to do very little for the outlandish €350,000 salary other than play solitaire or watch day time television. I’d feel uneasy about spending €50m to run the presidential office during the term — an amount which would build 250 family homes.

I couldn’t go for a drink or to a match without a posse of security personnel for company. OK, I’d get in free to the matches, but I’d probably have to throw in the muddy ball or shake hands with colossal rugby types, whose grip would crush my fingers.

I’m far too busy and active to retire to the Áras. I’d be very lonesome in the big smoke, and I’d miss the good life in Kerry.

No, like the late Garrett Fitzgerald, my temperament isn’t suited to seven years of mundane and innate inactivity.

Billy Ryle

Tralee, Co Kerry

Presidency: Nah, I’ll stick to the fishing

Having a choice is wonderful, but the opposite can be true too. Right now, I’m on the horns of a dilemma, stuck on the negative side of that equation: I do not know whether to run for the presidency or offer to sit in front of RTÉ’s Liveline mic.

One position requires dignity, magnetism, political maturity, and perception as well as a generally sunny disposition. Great charm and exceptional empathy are required too. The capacity to bite your lip is essential. The other requires the capacity to exploit and goad, all facilitated by well-disguised cynicism.

One offers a life under the unforgiving public eye for the incumbent and their family. The other offers a hurler-on-the-ditch distance from the consequences of their shoot-from-the-hip blathering.

One is very well rewarded financially, the other less so. One can be influential, the other is influential. One can be held to account — the other, again, less so. One is seen as a champion of the people — whatever that is today — and the other is derided as a first-class passenger on the perpetual gravy train. One is seen a conduit to vent our spleen the other can too often be an object of that spleen.

One is free to pronounce on any subject no matter how bizarre the views offered are. The other is — well, sometimes anyway  — constrained by government policies. One is shackled, the other celebrated.

To quote a man who once faced a similar dilemma: On mature refection, I think I’ll stick to the fishing, or what’s left of it in 2025. A pity, as I would have liked a well-made tweed suit.

Jack Power

Inniscarra, Cork

Praise for Higgins

Our President, Michael D Higgins ,is to be congratulated on reminding his fellow European presidents of their moral duty to do their upmost to end the genocide being conducted at Gaza by Israel before the eyes of the world.

J Anthony Gaughan

President Irish PEN

Blackrock, Co Dublin

Cork losing Lucey

As a Corkconian, are we to keep Wellington, Marlborough, etc, emphasise Victoria, and then ditch Bishop Lucey, homegrown and an original thinker and worker for the less privileged of his era?

Hugh Lee

Kilcoole, Wicklow

Obscuring body parts on internet

The modern technology which can prevent airport passengers' own private body parts from being seen by members of airport security is something that should, obviously, be welcomed by everyone.

But, I think, this same helpful technology — with its ability to obscure parts of the human body — could also be put to great good use everywhere on the internet to prevent illicit images of the human body from being observed by mistake by underage individuals who could then, as a sad consequence, become disturbed by them?

Such safety measures that are presently designed to keep the travelling public’s modesty intact at many airports could also, I feel, in the near future potentially make the internet of the 21st century a much more safer place for many people to happily grow and develop their talents and their abilities in?

Along, too, with less hidden dangers for them to worry about?

Hopefully, this should be the happy outcome — most especially for the young and the vulnerable?

Sean O’Brien

Kilrush, Co Clare

Minister must protect Irish hare

During Biodiversity Week, James Browne, the minister for heritage, declared in the Dáil that “respecting our wildlife means protecting them”.

Will Mr Browne respect and protect the Irish hare, an icon of biodiversity, by refusing licences for another season of cruel hare coursing?

He is currently considering an application for the licences which would allow bloodsport clubs to capture thousands of hares and use them as live lures for dogs to terrorise.

Monitoring reports from the past coursing season tell of hares with a broken leg, sore eye, and toe injury as well as a lame hare who “struggled to run off”, a hare who “collapsed as it was running”, a hare who died on release and “hares found dead on the day after coursing”.

Some hares were pounded into the ground by dogs and “euthanised as a result of injuries”.

All the hares suffered fear and stress while being netted from the wild, manhandled, confined in captivity and forced to run for their lives.

Mr Browne must respect the right of wildlife to live free from persecution, and promptly protect hares from this horror.

Philip Kiernan

Irish Council Against Blood Sports

Mullingar, Co Westmeath