Letters to the Editor: The Irish Famine is not a suitable subject for entertainment
The Famine Memorial on the banks of the River Liffey in Dublin. Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty
The designer of a new board game that is centred on the Irish Famine has defended it against criticism that it is offensive.Â
The board game depicting the Famine in 19th century Ireland was created by Compass Games for the US market.
This is not the first time that Ireland’s avoidable holocaust has been developed for entertainment purposes.Â
In 2015, plans by Irish scriptwriter Hugh Travers to develop a comedy series commissioned by Channel 4 about the Famine drew the ire of public opinion which led to an online petition with almost 20,000 signatures expressing outrage at its apparent trivialisation of the Famine.Â
Four years later in 2019 Irish comic, Kevin McAleer, wrote a comedy on the Famine entitled
Regardless of one’s opinion on whether the Famine is an appropriate topic to entertain, I believe society continues to ignore the primary factor which caused such starvation, coffin ships, forced emigration, and tragic deaths on such a vast scale.Â
Not alone did those in power fail the starving, but they adopted a laissez faire policy in regard to the export of food.Â
In previous times of potato blight, particularly during the 1780s, the government, in response to the needs of the people, closed the ports to keep Irish-grown food in Ireland.
The potato crop failure in 1845 again brought calls to close the ports to food exports, but this demand was rejected because wealthy merchants successfully lobbied government to keep the ports open so as not to stifle free enterprise.Â
It is most unlikely that the devastating failure of the potato crop in 1845 was not beyond the power of government to effectively manage.Â
The relief efforts which were made were totally inadequate at a time when Ireland was an integral part of the wealthiest empire on the globe.Â
Indeed, heavy laden ships freighted with food, which was sown and reaped by people too poor to purchase it themselves, left Irish ports daily.Â
The Irish Famine is not a suitable subject for entertainment.
by John Gibbons should be compulsory reading for Leaving Certificate students together with a study on climate and pollution because our lives are under threat from the Irish agri business.Â
Driving through areas where there are massive herds of cattle in the industrial dairy lands of Ireland smells like driving through open-sewer country with the mega nitrate-soaked cattle and pig slurry spread onto phosphorescent green fields.
This pollution soaks into our ground water supply and is washed into the streams and rivers of our once great countryside.Â
People are giving up on tough, mainly factory processed, overpriced Irish beef.Â
Ireland consumes only 9% of its agri products, yet the industry emits 38% of the Irish pollution.
This dairy-beef industry only survives with the massive State subsidies — over €2bn last year; obviously the industry is presently an unsustainable business model.Â
They must cull the massive herds to reduce the 38% methane pollution.
Our elected leader goes to China in an effort to promote Irish industry and refuses to support an EU trade deal with South American countries.Â
Case of agri tail wagging the Dáil?
The so-called triple lock limits the Government’s power to deploy more than 12 Defence Forces members overseas at one time.
Notwithstanding debate on this limitation, is now not the time to send at least some of the permitted 12 military personnel to Greenland to show real commitment to European defence?
These could be members of the Army Ranger Wing or specialist technical staff, engineers, logistics experts or staff officers.Â
Other countries, Germany, France, Finland, Sweden, and Slovenia have sent teams of two- or three-strong.
This would mean more than words and platitudes.
Donald Trump was by any objective measure the most flawed and defective Republican Party candidate to be nominated since Barry Goldwater. (If elected, Goldwater wanted to use nuclear weapons “tactically” in Vietnam.)
The 2024 Democratic National Convention was horrifying to watch.Â
A plethora of activists dominated the event and no effort was made to speak to independent voters or centrists in general.
This tendency is continuing under the leadership of Chuck Shumer and Hakeem Jeffries.Â
The Dems are gaining ground in the polls in spite of this because US president Trump is the most objectionable and untrustworthy president in living memory.
The Republicans know their audience and how to win elections. Two recent events illustrate the point.Â
Donald Trump held an event in the White House focused upon the benefits of whole milk over attenuated substitutes.Â
Zohran Mamdani held a press event at Gracie Mansion where he announced that he and his wife had installed a bidet.Â
The sheer electoral incompetence of the modern Democratic party is a sight to behold and one of the great tragedies of our time.
I for one am not feeling “the Joy”.
On January 14, 1784, the Continental Congress (forerunner of the current United States Congress) officially established the United States as a sovereign and independent nation that already had developed what the Iroquois, Native American people, claim to be the oldest living participatory democracy.
Now almost 250 years later we are witnessing the US seriously attempting to usurp the sovereignty and independence of a number of nations.
The poignant idiom — “where did it all go wrong?” — was never more apt.
