Letters to the Editor: Let's strive to end homelessness for good

"Everyone deserves the right to a safe and secure place to call home, with the existence of rough sleeping not only a systemic failure of our society but a moral one too".

With rates of homelessness rising across Ireland, it is heartening to see the collective determination of the HSE, Colm Burke TD, and local charities to tackle Cork’s rough sleeping crisis. Everyone deserves the right to a safe and secure place to call home, with the existence of rough sleeping not only a systemic failure of our society but a moral one too.

While treating the symptoms of unsheltered homelessness, such as addiction or mental health issues, is important, we must also action earlier intervention if we are to truly effect lasting change.

The surest way to prevent homelessness in the first instance is through the availability of affordable and social housing. Keeping more people safely in their homes for longer will immediately reduce rates of rough sleeping, but also provide the best platform from which to tackle compounding factors including poverty, substance abuse and long-term health conditions.

In a modern and wealthy country like Ireland, homelessness does not need to exist. Let’s now strive to end it for good.

Ryan McKiernan, managing director of Fat Macy’s Foundation, London

Rare hares need protection

I’m not among those who have written to a newspaper to report the first cuckoo of the year, though I always enjoy reading such letters. I just feel a twinge of sadness at reference to the decline in cuckoo numbers.

I felt the same way last weekend when I had the good fortune to see a hare in a field while out walking near the picturesque village of Inistioge.

At first, my eyes had deceived me and I thought I saw a rabbit, but focusing a little better, I was chuffed to see that it was in fact a hare.

British people, and some on this island too, often mistake our Irish hare for a rabbit from a distance, due to the difference between it and the brown hare commonly found in Britain. The Irish hare, a sub- species of the mountain hare that is unique to Ireland, is smaller and stockier than the brown hare, has shorter ears, and has a reddish brown coat in summer that changes to a grayish appearance in winter.

Anyway, I watched, enthralled, and feeling a tiny bit privileged, as this great survivor of the Ice Age grazed happily in the afternoon sunshine, with sheep some distance from him, neither species bothering the other. After about half a minute, it scampered off out of sight.

I say I was lucky to see this wonderful creature because hares are scarce in many parts of Ireland. The last time I saw one in its home terrain was in 2007.

It’s sad that, as with the cuckoo, sightings of our native hare have become so rare. I could of course see them at any one of the 70 or more scheduled venues in the forthcoming coursing season, but that’s exactly where I don’t wish to see them…. running for their lives.

Some people will, say, I know, that I must be cuckoo myself to be rhapsodising about a hare mooching about in a field.

But the protection and conservation of this mammal is important to me, and to many people across all walks of life.

I hope a day will dawn when others and I can admire a hare in its natural habitat…without having to contemplate what happens on coursing day.

John Fitzgerald, Callan, Co Kilkenny

Strain of data centres

Regarding Malcolm Byrne’s article ‘Do you have a mobile phone? Use online banking? You need a data centre for that’ 

It is ironic that minister Byrne would invoke the tale of the parish pump in his piece defending data centres without acknowledging the enormous strain data centres are placing not just on electricity grids — where the cost of having data centres is being passed on to the average consumer — but also on the water supply. Millions of litres of drinking water is used to cool data centres on a daily basis which puts paid to the idea that we are chosen because we are a ‘temperate climate’. 

We are chosen because we are willing to sell land to the highest European bidder for little to no benefit to Irish people, and our climate has become rapidly less temperate in recent years. I’ve certainly produced enough sweat this summer to cool a data centre for a few minutes.

To say that we need to host more than the staggering 30% of Europe’s data centres we’re already burdened with because we don’t manufacture anything of worth on a global scale is to ignore both our enviable agricultural exports, and the enormously talented writers, musicians and actors we have on this island. I know what I’d rather Ireland be know for.

Courtney Smyth, Kildare

Trump should be snubbed

Regarding ‘Irish Examiner view: Trump should be given polite welcome to Ireland’ (August 11).

Trump is visiting Ireland as a business owner, not formally as a head of state; as such, he is due no more than any other visitor. Additionally, he is a convicted felon, in the view of many a violator of international laws and norms and may not meet the moral/ethical standards the Irish Government has established to screen potential visitors to the State.

A “snub” may be more appropriate than a welcome from any part of the Irish Government.

Some private entities and individual citizens may celebrate his visit, most want nothing to do with this egotistic man-child.

Your article advises “appeasement”; the citizenry would be better served if it suggested opposition to Trump as an individual, his administration, and his policies, and his potential visit.

Bill Hawkes, Kilmihil, Co Clare

Cyber attack vulnerability

A new threat intelligence report published by CYFIRMA in July, 2026, has painted a stark picture of cyber risks facing the UK and Ireland. According to this report, the darknet is now offering UK and Irish personal data numbering hundreds of millions of records for sale. These figures are really horrifying and once again prove how vulnerable we all are.

In the meantime, instead of striving against mass data theft the states spend immense sums out of the budget to allegedly provide our cyber security launching rather controversial projects such as “Chat Control”. 

The record shows that these measures are totally inefficient, that is also proved by the growing number of leakages, and do nothing but give the authorities new instruments for spying, censorship and control.

And what’s even more disturbing, this is going on against the backdrop of Europe’s significant vulnerability to the US, as the whole Internet and telecommunication infrastructure is mostly under control of the small coterie of the American companies that have to provide all data upon the first request of the NSA. To various extents we are all under scrutiny and at any time all our data whenever appeared in the Net can finally end up in the hands of foreign intelligence agencies. And the European legal systems do nothing but promote it.

After all, providing cybersecurity falls on the shoulders of ordinary people who have to think a hundred times before leaving a digital scent in the Internet.

Alex Grehan, Ballinlough, Cork

Happy memories of Brothers

My school days with the Christian Brothers were among the happiest days of my life. Skillful and encouraging teachers awakened my passion for knowledge. My values, ambitions, and standards emerged under the guidance of lay and religious teachers, who stressed the importance of a good education.

Making the link between study and future success, I developed a work ethic that has stood me in good stead throughout my life. My teachers were fair minded and enthusiastic. Many of them generously provided extra classes before Scholarship, Inter Cert and Leaving Cert exams.

The Brothers emphasised learning, Gaelic games, Catholicism, and Republicanism, which were grist to the mill for me. Playing on the school teams was character-building. Use of ‘the leather’ was still permissible but most of the punishment I took was delivered in good spirits on the playing fields.

My secondary education was a productive experience, which opened the door to higher education and a fulfilling career. I am indebted to the Brothers who prepared me to live life to the full. They were dedicated people, many of whom I remain friendly with. I never experienced the brutality perpetrated on other young people. I deeply regret that any pupil suffered physical, psychological, or sexual abuse at the hands of sadistic or paedophilic teachers, lay or religious.

But don’t tar and feather all the religious. The vast majority of them are blameless in their devoted lives of service to God and to man. There are a few evildoers in every sample population. One bad apple doesn’t mean that all the apples on the tree are bad. Don’t make the innocent suffer in the pursuit of the guilty.

Billy Ryle, Tralee, Co Kerry

OSCE summit in Ireland?

Ireland was a founding member of the OSCE, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, along with many other countries, including the USA and the then Soviet Union. 

Its declared mission is to “work for stability, peace and democracy through an engaged political dialogue, shared values and joint action”. 

The last summit meeting of the OSCE took place in Kazakhstan in 2010. There has never been a more opportune time for Ireland to use the auspices of the OCSE to initiate another summit meeting in order to hold much needed peace talks in the current Ukraine/Russia and other conflict situations.

Elizabeth Cullen, Kilcullen, Co Kildare

Stop the inane music-playing

I write this sitting at an outside table at a West Cork hotel overlooking the sea. It’s a sunny day and all seems well — except for the intrusive, repetitive, loud, inane, and really irritating background ‘music’ that plays on endlessly. And so it is in so many cafes, bars, hotel lounges, shopping malls, hairdressers, etc all over the country. 

People who go to so much trouble setting up these types of businesses clearly think it obligatory to play some kind of moronic, inane ‘music’ when it would be so much better to not have any such background noise. 

Yes I know that the musically illiterate aren’t bothered by all this but there you go. The torture will no doubt continue for those who have a more discerning musical intelligence.

Anthony Hartnett, Bishopstown, Cork

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