Letters to the Editor: Dáil Éireann condemns foxes to further persecution
The bill to ban fox hunting in Ireland was defeated in the Dáil by 124 votes to 24 last week. File picture: Maxwell's
During the covid lockdown, people nationwide reconnected with nature, rediscovering the great neglected wilderness.
It was during those oppressive, deeply worrying days and nights of lockdown that many people welcomed foxes into their gardens, fields, village squares, laneways, or parks. Many a friendship was struck up between hard-pressed humans observing draconian medical advice and this attractive red dog of the countryside.
The provincial media ran scores of articles about people in both urban and rural districts finding, to their surprise and even shock, that the fox can be quite a friendly animal when you get to know it.
In Co Offaly, for example, scores of people who were cocooning (remember that awful euphemism for isolating oneself) made friends with foxes and had them literally eating out of their hands.
Others, throughout Ireland, including farmers, happily cared for fox-cub orphans they came across. Heartwarming pictures appeared in the local papers of people posing with foxes that looked perfectly at home, though still officially classed as wild creatures.
I think we owe something to foxes for the comfort and companionship they brought us in those dark times, not so long ago.
In addition to keeping rodents at bay in the countryside, and having a central nervous system like any canine (which makes it just as susceptible to pain), this animal is a benefactor.
An old friend that comes back into our lives every now and then when we open our eyes to nature and see the treasures of our wildlife heritage… perhaps on our own doorstep.
What a pity then that on December 17, 124 TDs saw fit to condemn the fox to further persecution at the hands of so-called sportspeople. While politics may be deemed a blood sport, it’s nothing compared to what the fox has to endure in the real thing.
True, politicians are pursued by media ‘hounds’, but they’re not caught and eviscerated.
During lockdown the fox was our friend. Fox-hunting should be in permanent lockdown.
Regarding Saoirse McHugh’s article — 'There is no urban-rural divide on a fox hunting ban' (Irish Examiner, December 16 — even though the fox got my chickens last March (they have to eat as well), I’m against hunting them for fun, especially with the use of hounds etc.
It is barbaric to hunt and distress animals in the guise of a good day out and with the feeble excuse that it’s a rural pursuit that should be saved or cherished.
It strikes me more as a carnival of cruelty and blood lust, that is too easily then applied to humans.
In the US, chiefly in the south, they used to hang ‘strange fruit’ from hunting expeditions.
Fox hunting is, in my opinion, the personification and not too distant relative of the blood lust of the supremacist, entitled, controlling and lynching squads that roamed in the US in the not-too distant past (maybe similar to the Cromwellian ones here in Ireland).
There is no place for this display of bloodlust in a modern society. Get a PlayStation or a football, if you want to have fun!
Patricia Timmons’s soulful letter — Letters to the Editor, Irish Examiner, Saturday, November 13 — encapsulates Ireland’s protracted vacillation on the tragedy of Israel and Palestine.
Reading of Anne Frank, the author’s childhood empathy was tinged with a fearful dilemma. If she were there at the time, would she have risked helping Anne?
Seamlessly, your writer moves to today’s innocent victims in the Middle East. At this stage, she feels no indecision. There can be no excuse for Ireland not to do the right thing. How can we correct our children if we have lost our own proper practice of humanity?
The message is compelling because it is an undiscriminating plea for all the innocent Anne Franks, whether in Palestine, Israel, Bondi Beach, wherever.
Focusing on the victims and the vulnerable will marginalise the warmongers
According to the Health Research Board, there was a 259% increase in deaths by cocaine poisoning between 2013 and 2022.
This report shows the impact of cocaine on drug-related deaths in Ireland. To put this in context, we have seen an increase from 32 deaths in 2013 to 115 deaths in 2022. In Ireland, cocaine was the second-most common drug implicated in poisoning deaths in 2022.
These trends in cocaine usage really reflect what is happening in the wider population, because many other studies and data show a significant increase in the number of people using cocaine in the general population, ergo we can’t be surprised to see its impact on poisoning deaths.
The majority of cocaine deaths happen to be men and they are on average in their late 30s. This means that these are people who are dying prematurely in the prime of their life who leave behind not only mothers and fathers but also partners and children.
One senses at this time of year, coming up to Christmas, that their loss will be even more keenly felt because many of these deaths were preventable. Some of the data is telling us that many cocaine deaths involve other substances, most commonly heroin and methadone, which is a prescription medication for the treatment of opioid addiction, and benzodiazepines which we may know as Valium or Xanax.
An underlying trend for Irish drug-related deaths is where we have poly-drug use which increases a person’s risk of fatal overdose. The other thing of note when looking at cocaine deaths is that one in five were injecting at the time of death.
If a person is injecting drugs and then injecting a cocktail of drugs, they significantly increase their risk of a poisoning death.
A lot of readers will agree with Willie John McBride’s statement that too many subs are ruining rugby.
Bringing on 20-stone players for the last quarter is dangerous and ridiculous. The break at half time to give players a rest has almost become meaningless now, there are so many running on and off the pitch during a match.
Reserves should only be used in case of injuries, or as the Ballymena legend said: “If you got injured with Ireland in my time you were put out on the wing because the ball never went out there.”
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