The Catholic Church has rightly been held to account for failings and the succession of abuse scandals that have rocked it in recent years, but itâs still a powerful institution globally, including in Ireland. For that reason, it can be a potent force for good, in that it can influence large numbers of people via its ethical pronouncements and declarations of policy.
Right now, the Church in Ireland could make a huge difference by taking a tough, uncompromising, and resolute stand against racism.
Iâm not talking about those occasional references to the issue by a priest here and there. Some excellent, conscientious clerics give it attention, but far more is required.
Iâm thinking of the heavy-duty approach ⊠pastoral letters and carefully thought out, hard-hitting sermons, to be delivered in all parishes, aimed at counteracting the upsurge in racism across Irish society.
In recent weeks, we had those shameful attacks on members of the Indian community, including small children, and people who are not even immigrants: Theyâve been here for years, or even decades, working and living peacefully in communities nationwide.
Apart from those incidents, there has been an explosion of racially motivated hate messages online. Not a day passes without a post eliciting a torrent of abuse directed at people of minority ethnic groups.
Anything can draw the bane of these hatemongers. If an Irish athlete praised for his or her performance shows even a hint of non-Irish ethnicity, the vitriol flows.
I know we hear that âsure nobody cares what the Church says anymore, after all the scandalsâ. But the fact remains that a large percentage of Irish people show allegiance, however strained or halfhearted, to Catholicism.
I urge those within the Church who have a say in these matters to prioritise racism in Ireland. At national and local level, in every corner of the land, it needs to speak out.
It needs to make it clear to all that racism is a grave sin that offends God; that itâs a cancer in our society.
It must drive home the essential message that immigrants are, in accordance with the true spirit and core message of Christianity, our brothers and sisters, to be treated humanely ⊠not to be vilified online or met with placards that scream: âGet them outâ, or âThis town says no!â
On the subject of immigrants and refugees, Iâm not an expert on Canon Law or the finer details of Church teaching, but I do recall one line from the Gospel: âCome to me, all who are weary and heavily burdened, and I will give you rest. â
John Fitzgerald, Callan, Co Kilkenny
West must stop appeasing Israel
In his recent column, Fergus Finlay suggests that a two-state solution is the only thing that will solve the decades-long Israel and Palestine challenge. That seems unlikely, but any solution must start with the cause of Palestine, not of Israel.
There are other points; heâs correct that the Hamas attack was barbaric, but Israelâs treatment of Palestinians over generations has been more so. Study them, and the Hamas attack was entirely predictable and, arguably, justified.
Your columnist was annoyed by leaflets showing that Israeli intelligence and international agencies warned an attack was coming.
These are important facts, independently established, that show Netanyahu et al knew but chose not to act. The âwhyâ points to a judgement that, facing serious criminal charges, an attack might save him and offer his cabal a chance to push for the Zionist ambition of a much larger Israel.
We need to rid ourselves of the spectre of the Holocaust as though it is the backdrop to Israelâs behaviour. It is not. The origins lie in the decision of the British government of 1917 to âgiftâ the land of Palestine to the Jewish people. The only dissenting voice, Edward Montagu, warned against taking the land of the indigenous people. He warned, too, that it would heighten antisemitism. Montagu was the only Jewish member of that British cabinet.
The UK has disgraced itself, as has the EU and the US, so when it comes to the solutions business, it is fundamental for those players that have continually failed the Palestinians to stay clear of advising or attempting to shape any new political order.
In the West, we need a reckoning for our collective involvement in the horror we allowed to unfold â not just our contribution to the slaughter of 100,000 Gazans and counting, but to how, since its foundation, weâve fed Israelâs extraordinary sense of entitlement.
Israel is not a democracy. It is an ethnocracy where the state is controlled by a dominant ethnic group with the ambition to further the interests, power, and resources of that group, which controls the entire state apparatus and works toward that end. Despite its apartheid nature, the West always supported Israel and has continued to do so.
Any full and lasting peace is dependent on seeing the crisis first through the Palestinian lens and not, as the West has always done, exclusively through an Israeli prism.
Fintan Drury, Dublin 4
AI sticking plasters
One wonders will ChatGPTâs new parental controls actually work?
Will these new controls be a meaningful step towards safety, or will it just be a sticking plaster on a much deeper problem?
We are all grappling with how to use new AI tools, or whether we would be better off staying away from AI completely. For some people, they have become a source of support. But what happens when a chatbot becomes a trusted confidant for a teenager in crisis?
Following a lawsuit in the United States from the parents of a teenager who died by suicide, OpenAI is rolling out parental controls for ChatGPT. The move comes as data suggests mental health queries are a common type of prompt from Irish users, with local experts and regulators issuing stark warnings about the dangers of using AI for therapy. Itâs definitely a rather worrying landscapes that we are quickly moving into.
John OâBrien, Clonmel, Co Tipperary
Stop with the slurry
Visitors to West Cork in summer are greeted by the overpowering stench of cow slurry spread on the fields, produced by industrial-size dairy herds which have sprung up all over from Bandon to Skibbereen and further west.
I doubt many of these uninitiated visitors from our European cities will have the stomach to venture back again. In a conversation with a renowned local accommodation hostess, I was told that three families who booked in for a weekâs stay at the beginning of August departed the following morning due to the pervasive smell of slurry through open bedroom windows.
One has to ponder what effect the slurry has when it permeates the water table and enters the rivers, the source of our drinking water.
Daniel Teegan, Union Hall, Co Cork
Deer bounties are baseless populism
The proposal put forward at a local Kerry IFA [Irish Farmersâ Association] meeting last week for the State to introduce a bounty on deer in Kerry is a populist gesture with no scientific basis. Itâs a crude and unhelpful intervention by biased stakeholders and local, populist politicians into what is a complex issue with no clear solutions.
The idea of a bounty is a throwback to the dark ages of animal bounty hunting in Ireland, when amputations from foxes, crows, magpies, weasels, stoats, badgers, and mink were presented at the local Garda station. Typical offerings were severed heads, tails, paws, and tongues.
No one knows how many deer there are in the country, as no survey has been carried out to determine the actual population. One would think this would be a basic starting point in any strategy to reduce the numbers.
As it is, we are already culling an enormous number of deer each year; over 78,000 culled in 2023, up 41% from the previous year. The 78,000 doesnât include deer illegally killed by poachers, nor does it include the number of deer killed on the extensive road network. Some 6,486 deer-hunting licences were issued by the State in 2023. That year, 71% of the deer culled were from seven counties: Wicklow, Cork, Waterford, Tipperary, Kerry, Galway, and Clare. Wicklow accounted for 29% of the cull.
There are alternatives to culling: the widespread use of ultra-sound deer whistles, small whistles that can be attached to the bumper of a car and which emit a warning that humans cannot hear but that deer can; targeted relocation of deer to low-density areas; fencing in strategic areas, in particular where there have been and continue to be encroachment onto roads; further research into the viability of using contraceptives to reduce the numbers; a nationwide education programme, encouraging drivers to slow down when they are driving at night through an area in which there is a large deer population.
A suite of measures as above will not solve the problem in its entirety, but will undoubtedly reduce the hysteria that presently exists around this emotive issue.
Gerry Boland, Keadue, Co Roscommon
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