Letters to the Editor: We have the competence to resolve housing and environmental issues
Ireland's waterways, from Lough Erne to the Blackwater, are being destroyed but there has been ‘no meaningful response’. Stock picture
Living in a post-truth world divided by ever more toxic social media and politics is, we are assured, the challenge of our age.
Really? Surely the sense of powerlessness — a reality rather than a sense — is the greater drain on humanity’s more noble instincts?
Despite protests involving millions across nearly every democracy, Israel continues its genocide and faces no consequences.
Putin inflicts atrocity after atrocity in Ukraine, all the while giving two fingers to the world. In the US, Donald Trump jettisons values and institutions that made that country, for a time at least, a real beacon on a hill.
In recent weeks, swathes of Europe were ablaze because of record temperatures brought about by climate collapse. The temperatures in Ireland in recent weeks are part of the same implosion. Yet our, and most of the first world’s, efforts to slow climate collapse are inadequate — as are conventional environmental protections.
The destruction of Irish waterways, especially Lough Erne, accelerates yet there is no meaningful response. There has just been a catastrophic fish kill on the Munster Blackwater but any sanction, if there is even a court case, would probably be covered by the sale of one good calf.
In what can only be described as suicidal indifference, our Government continues to argue for an extension of our nitrates derogation — the last one in Europe.
Were this issue put to a vote, the derogation would certainly go — yet our parliamentarians can’t find the backbone or leadership to end this destructive indulgence.
Then there’s the housing crisis, a man-made calamity imposing a new kind of serfdom on our young people and their families.
The Government of a tiny country like this cannot resolve all of these issues but surely, if our democracy is to remain valid, it should do much, much better on housing and protecting our critically endangered waterways, habitats and general environment ... two domestic issues within its competence.
These are dismal thoughts made unavoidable by a complete absence of energetic, principled, political leadership. That no serious political figure wants to challenge for the presidency is just another symptom of this malaise.
There is no doubt that hatred and racism are inextricably linked.
Ms Harte sums up this contentious issue when she says: “Hatred is always based on fear. Fear of losing something. Real or perceived competition for resources or threats to self-image.”
I find something eerie in many Irish occasions where one has to contend with the unrelenting whiteness, the emotional tribal attachments, the violent prejudices lurking beneath apparently pleasant social surfaces allied to the cosy smugness of belonging.
Until the State comes down heavily on racist attacks, this egregious behaviour will unquestionably continue.
Education in our schools and in our homes on this emotive subject has to be of paramount importance. I believe that we all have the power to bring others with us on the path to equality.
The late Nelson Mandela said: “No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his [or her] skin, or his [or her] background, or his or her religion.”
I find such quotes to be a reminder that equality is not just an
abstract ideal, but a fundamental human right, and that dismantling racism requires active effort and a commitment to justice and understanding.
I want to commend Sarah Harte for the sensitive way in which she handled this controversial and delicate subject. I believe it leaves food for thought for the reader.
The article headlined ‘Number of children hospitalised for eating disorders doubles, new figures show’ ( , August 14) makes for stark reading. Eating disorders are complex medical conditions that not only affect the young person concerned but also their loved ones, family, and friends.
Wraparound care is essential, requiring an increase in investment at a national level. Not every treatment will work successfully for every person that presents at a hospital, or is diagnosed with an eating disorder.
If any reader, or professional working with young people wants an insight into this issue, I strongly recommend Evanna Lynch’s memoir, .
It is a harrowing, haunting, honest and unflinching account, and yet, a beautifully-crafted read that reflects the author’s own journey with and ultimately overcoming an eating disorder.
I am disappointed at the failure to reach an legal international treaty that would end plastic pollution.
Unfortunately, such aspirations will never materialise while many of the participating countries continue to ignore the elephants in the room, namely the failure to acknowledge the importance of a cap on plastic products and being conscious of the chemicals that make up plastic production.
No amount of reuse or recycling will compensate while we ignore the quality and quantity of plastic waste we create because, ultimately, the solution must be reflected in what we create.
Donald Trump’s relentless drive for global approbation knows no boundary. His egoistical posturing in pseudo-peace pursuits, merely to self-promote towards Nobel Peace Prize attention betrays his pathetic shallowness.
Coupled with his transactional modus operandi across issues such as tariff threats, nation-snatching (Canada, Greenland) and his Gaza riviera concept etc, it is a grotesque odyssey of basic decorum destruction.
Who could believe that a convicted felon, who would be in gaol only for his presidency and who wantonly pardons people who have criminally supported him via their proven illegal actions, can be afforded the untrammelled power to create such global chaos across all settled systems of decency, respect, and democratic behaviour?
His attempts to distance himself from his previous Jeffrey Epstein connections is a pathetic abuse of office, arranging faux Alaskan ‘conversations’ with another world despot to pretend he’s a peacemaker, rather than a prior child predator associate.
Vladimir Putin will run rings around him in the manipulative machination stakes wherein truth is a total stranger, anathema to both charlatans.
How can the US Republican Party stand by in silence with any degree of self-respect?
Shame on them.
