Letters to the Editor: Alcohol costing lives and business

'Alcoholism is a primary, chronic disease with genetic, psychological, and environmental factors influencing its development and manifestations.' File picture: Yui Mok/PA

I want to thank the Irish Examiner’s Neil Michael for last Wednesday’s article on alcohol abuse and its impact on work productivity.

The above figure is utterly staggering, which suggests to me that many employees suffer from alcohol use disorders, so it’s no surprise to me, that the consequence of problem drinking are often evident in the workplace.

Alcoholic employees may be less productive and more inclined toward injury and absenteeism, which can drive up organisational costs.

One must not forget that their habits can also impact their behaviour, damage relationships, as well as harming employee morale.

Alcoholism is a primary, chronic disease with genetic, psychological, and environmental factors influencing its development and manifestations.

This disease is often progressive and fatal. It is characterised by impaired control over drinking, preoccupation with the drug alcohol, use of alcohol despite adverse consequences, and distortion in thinking, most notably denial. As a country we cannot afford to sit back and do nothing.

It’s my contention that the Government should develop a comprehensive alcohol strategy to tackle this rising harm, which I believe would in turn have the knock-on effect of reducing the workplace financial burden.

According to Alcohol Action Ireland (AII), the abuse of alcohol means that €8.5bn is lost in workplace productivity. According to the National Alcohol Diary Survey in 2013 , 4.2% of employed respondents reported that they had missed days from work due their alcohol use in the 12 months prior to the survey.

John O’Brien, Clinical psychotherapist Clonmel, Co Tipperary

Contribution of Artane Band

Councillor Mannix Flynn’s latest campaign effort to change the name of the Artane Band, which includes musical instruments painted black by Artane Band abuse survivors now on display in a city centre location at 20-21 South William St, shows a total disregard for the essential contribution made by the Artane School of Music to the musical education of many young students, which includes a member of my family.

Councillor Flynn is not the only one who suffered abuse at the hands of the Christian Brothers. We survivors of abuse have to live with that experience which includes the inescapable reminders. Rather than being the subject of criticism, the staff and young members of the Artane School of Music deserve to be praised for their musical efforts in supporting our national identity and I thank them for their contribution.

Peter Mulvany, Clontarf, Dublin 3

Solar farms on agricultural land

A solar farm is due to open shortly. It’s situated on 450 acres of former peat bog in Co Kildare. It will have the capacity to provide electricity to the equivalent of 25,000 homes.

Per Census 2022, there were 1.8m private households in Ireland. This figure represents all occupied dwellings, including those in temporary accommodation.

Another 67,000 homes were classed as holiday homes, while just under 164,000 homes were deemed to be vacant.

To supply power to 2m households — inhabited permanently or temporarily — at a similar capacity to the Kildare facility would involve covering 36,000 acres with solar panels.

These figures do not include an analysis of how many of these solar farms would be needed to produce the power to supply the non-residential power requirements of the State; industry, agriculture, health infrastructure, the hospitality sector, the public sector network, transport. Or of course the data centres essential to facilitate any modern high-tech society.

Solar farms are an excellent use of former peat lands, I suppose.

But is it seriously being projected that tens of thousands of acres of fertile agricultural land will meet the same fate in the future to meet our growing energy needs across all sectors?

In the meantime, hopefully the sun will shine long and clear upon Timahoe North!

Larry Dunne, Rosslare Harbour, Co Wexford

Would King Puck defend this ‘sport’?

Defending hoisting aloft a goat in a cage at Puck Fair, a proud Kerry man opined in a radio interview recently: “Himself up there is a wise monarch of all he surveys … He’s thinking of human affairs and if he could talk, by God he’d give us answers to all our problems.”

Every year, we hear similar quaint attributions of human wit to the unfortunate goat that finds himself looking down in bafflement at the allegedly superior species that put him up there.

Mind you, some psychic researchers believe goats have super-normal potential. The 2004 movie The Men who stare at Goats, supposedly based on real events, has fellows trying to penetrate the minds of goats via telepathy.

At the risk of appearing anthropomorphic myself, I wonder what King Puck, were he possessed of the wisdom of Solomon (or indeed just average human intelligence) would say about the fact that the part of the country where he reigns for three days from his little barred kingdom has more coursing clubs than any other part of Ireland.

The blood sport is almost extinct in Connacht and Ulster, and just hanging on in Leinster. But in Munster, and especially in Kerry, hares have to keep their eyes and ears open for six months of the year to avoid being captured and forced to run from salivating dogs.

Indeed, Puck might tell us if there was something the air or the water in that part of Ireland that predisposes folk to want to watch animals having a tough time … or even a seriously cruel or traumatic experience.

Then again, Puck, with that silly crown resting uneasily, and revoltingly, on his innocent old head, might just say: “Get me down from here, ye shower of …”

John Fitzgerald, Callan, Co Kilkenny

Cruelty blackspot

A reported double-digit decrease in tourism revenue and visitor numbers from overseas has been blamed on causes including the high-cost economy.

An unacknowledged factor in
the downward trend is likely to be Ireland’s growing reputation as an animal cruelty blackspot.

Countless comments online convey the disgust people feel when they discover that fox hunting and hare coursing continue here, decades after they were banned in other places, and that thousands of badgers are snared and shot every year as part of failed TB eradication efforts.

Ireland’s unfortunate title of “puppy farm capital of Europe” further fuels the off-putting perception that this is an island where cash comes before compassion.

Meanwhile, bird-watchers are choosing to fly elsewhere to avoid witnessing multitudes of feathered friends being blasted out of the sky.

While Fáilte Ireland recognises nature-based tourism is a “large and growing component of international tourism”, the government’s facilitation of cruelty in every corner of the country is tarnishing our global image and making Ireland a no-go area for many animal lovers.

Philip Kiernan, Irish Council Against Blood Sports, Mullingar, Co Westmeath

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