Letters to the Editor: Croke Park 2026 calendar should be nailed down now
U2 performing at Croke Park in 2017. A reader says decisions about next year's GAA calendar should not depend on pop artists' tour schedules. File picture: Brian Lawless/PA
Once again, John Fogarty, your GAA correspondent, is quite correct (Irish Examiner, August 6). He said GAA president Jarlath Burns should make a decision now on the dates for the All-Ireland finals next year. But it is a pity, and it should not be, that the likelihood of U2 or some other rock band playing in Croke Park next summer seems to be affecting the president’s early decision on these dates.
Of course, the above is not the only problem which concerns many GAA supporters, myself included at the present time. I am not aware of anybody who agrees with the penalties, the very short inter-county championship season, and the fact that no club games are being played during the summer months.
Many supporters would be in favour of a return to playing the senior and minor All-Ireland finals on the same day in Croke Park. Presently, the playing of the minor championships at any old time, sometimes in out-of-the-way venues, is wrong. It gives the impression that Croke Park just wants to get these minor games played and out of the way as quickly as possible.
I am not the only one who believes that county GAA managers have far too much power, which requires curtailment, as they are the main reason why there are no club games played during summer. We, in the GAA, badly need another system of playing our games, and it is not rocket science.
Start the season in March and play the inter-county games on the first weekend of every month, with the club games on the other three weekends. Play the All-Irelands and county finals during late September. The number of games that a player would play would lessen as the season progressed depending on the success or otherwise of his club and county.
Get rid of the stupid razzmatazz in Croke Park. It is just awful and serves no purpose, particularly during the interval of games when supporters just want to talk and listen to their friends. Again, I am not aware of anybody who is in favour of it.
The following is my last suggestion.
Play the national hurling and football leagues during October and November, with the semi-finals and finals in February. Give the above plan a trial run for a year and await the outcome.
The world will eventually go into Gaza and make clear that the 61,000 reported by Gaza’s health ministry to have been killed so far, are only a fraction of the dead. Many more lie under the rubble or were not able to be brought to hospital to be counted. The following questions will then demand answers.
Why did the UN and International Court of Justice allow a full famine to develop after four months of Israel blocking food, medicine, and fuel to Gaza, when they could have forced the aid through under Article 7 of the UN charter?
Why did the world not stop Israel’s war crimes when the first hospital was shelled, instead allowing all 36 hospitals to be repeatedly bombed?
Why did the world media accept a ban on their journalists reporting inside Gaza, and why did RTÉ continually refer to “the Hamas-controlled health ministry”, long after CNN and Channel 4 dropped this nomenclature?
Why did Western governments, including Ireland, drag their feet on sanctioning Israel, despite consistent mass protests throughout the world?
Why were many decent people silenced, in the face of clear Israeli barbarity against children and families in Gaza, by the fear that criticising Israel might make them appear antisemitic (a charge refuted by the many Jewish critics of Israel)?
Why were US warplanes feted and refuelled at Shannon Airport despite vocal criticism by Ireland of the “war” they were enabling and supporting?
Why did the Irish Central Bank take on the facilitation of Israeli war bonds in the EU, thus providing at least €418m of the funding of Israel’s war economy?
Why did the world stand by for 21 months, wringing its hands and looking pained, while the war crimes of bombing civilians, starving civilians, and forced population transfers took place before our eyes? A genocide in plain sight.
What would it take to bring a just and lasting peace to the Palestinians? According to the editorial on Tuesday, August 5, “the two-state solution is the only option”.
If that is true, then there is actually no solution.
The ‘two-state solution’ has become a mantra enunciated by political leaders and many other people who do not seem to have given any thought to the historical context which has led us to the current genocide in Gaza and the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.
In 2024, Jewish historian Ilan Pappe wrote a book called A Very Short History of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, in which he lays bare the fallacies underlying the two-state solution mantra. In his final chapter, he draws seven or eight conclusions. All are relevant to a full historical understanding but, in a short letter, only some can be referenced.
In his third conclusion, he notes that from the moment the Zionist movement focused on Palestine as the site of a new Jewish nation, it became a settler-colonial movement. The early Zionists made no secret of their wish to remove the native population — to force them out if necessary. This fundamental objective has not changed in over 100 years, except that is has now reached genocidal proportions as happened historically in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc.
His sixth conclusion is that the two-state solution — the main concept underlying the so-called peace process — has dismally failed. It is not practicable any more because of the presence of 750,000 illegal Jewish settlers in the West Bank, which has been split into dozens of military controlled enclaves since 1967. Equally critically, it can’t work because its logical and moral premises are flawed. It applies to only a small part of Palestine (22% max) and only to part of the Palestinian people. What about the Palestinian refugees and the Palestinian minority inside Israel, who were under harsh military rule from 1948 to 1956? Pappe argues that all of these dimensions can only be addressed in a single democratic state, with everyone enjoying equal rights.
His final conclusion is that we need to change how we talk about Israel and Palestine. Until we acknowledge that we are talking about decolonisation, then it’s all just “hot air”.
In response to Michael Moynihan’s article about traffic cameras: In California, whenever a motorist gets a ticket, the insurance companies are informed.
Consequently, this increases their insurance premiums. Naturally, drivers are keen to avoid fines.
I want to compliment the ’s Cianan Brennan for an excellent piece of journalism on US president Donald Trump’s tariff regime (‘Trump’s global tariff agenda puts Ireland’s pharmaceutical industry at serious risk’ — Saturday, August 2).
Brennan delineates in his piece how nations are beginning to fall into line following these tariff announcements.
Some commentators believe that Europe has capitulated to Trump’s tariff demands but other observers are putting the spin that 15% tariff on the EU could have been a lot worse.
After reading Brennan’s piece, one is left asking the big question around pharma, particularly for Ireland.
We know that the section 232 inquiry is meant to take circa two weeks. At the moment, the 0% still sticks for pharma, which, as we know, is obviously a huge industry in Ireland. One must remember that there’s about 30,000 jobs linked to US pharma firms. So there’s definitely a big question mark over what this will mean.
Aside from Ireland, I was thinking of the leaders of more than 60 countries plunged into a fresh race to secure trade deals with the US. It seems that these leaders are being treated like puppets by the Trump administration.
There was a lot of commentary about the way the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, kind of rolled over and agreed to everything when she met Trump. I would actually go along with that.
Then we have some commentators saying that it could have been far worse.
If one were to look at some of the tariffs that were meted out, one would have to say that they are absolutely outrageous, particularly the tariffs Trump has put on some of the poorest countries in the world. One would like to ask: What does he think he’s going to do to their economies?
Syria is being tariffed at 41%, with Myanmar at 40%. I believe that this is an outrageous thing to do. South Africa is being tariffed at 39%, Switzerland at 39%, and Canada at 35%.
I think that this is all very serious for the world.
The question many economists are now asking is: Does our place in the world suggest that we pay reverence and deference to Trump and his tariffs? Alternatively, one could play the long game by saying that Trump will be gone in a couple of years, so countries might decide to wait it out.
One senses that there’s a lot of uncertainty coming out of Leinster House and Europe.
Brennan’s article leaves the reader in no doubt that Ireland will need to up its game in meeting the demands of Trump’s tariffs.
