Letters to the Editor: A positive thought ahead of Darkness into Light

Irish Examiner

09-05-2025

It's heartening to see another Darkness into Light walk coming up on Saturday. It's said that almost everyone thinks of suicide as an option at some point. A seemingly overwhelming and irresistible despair forms, like a cloud blocking the light, you might say.
But there's always a way out. It's at least worth asking for a second opinion because, as we know too well from how the world works, nothing is ever exactly how it seems.
How many times has a problem seemed beyond the power of any force on Earth to resolve… and begun to look or sound a lot less daunting after just a chat with someone you trust, who is prepared to listen?
A chink of light — a tiny flicker maybe — enters the darkness and, before too long, you find that whatever it was that cast the cruel shadow could be tackled after all.
A favourite reason of my own for not quitting this life is the curious finding that a big majority of people who attempt suicide, and who report near-death experiences, are relieved they did not end their lives.
Regardless of whether near-death experiences are visions of an afterlife or something else entirely, it's interesting that those fortunate people reckoned that life was, after all, better than a self-inflicted exit from this world.
Apart from giving one's own life a chance, there's another reason not to 'end it all' and that's the way so many loved ones, and other people we don't even know, will be affected. To avoid hurting those people, it's better by far to talk to a friend, work colleague, or counsellor. It could be the best decision or the best day's work ever.
Life is short enough as it is, I believe, and there's enough grieving. How much better just to talk to someone: Call a helpline if you don't want to share with someone you know.
I don't mean to judge anyone who died by suicide, but just to say: If the choice is between leaving this world abruptly in a way that will bring nothing but heartache, and giving life another chance, then it's better to stay. You deserve to live.
John Fitzgerald
Callan, Co Kilkenny
More work needed to transpose EU equality directives
Since the adoption of the EU Race Equality Directive in 2000, all EU states have been required to designate a body or bodies for the promotion of equal treatment. The Irish designated body was initially the Equality Authority, which was later replaced by the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC).
It is a year this month since the EU adopted two new directives which provide a much stronger legal framework for the work of national equality bodies. These have to be transposed by June 2026, and so far we have seen little indication of what is planned in Ireland.
The IHREC has recently said that it supports a full and ambitious transposition, which is very welcome. However, in writing to the Taoiseach and other ministers on the adoption of the directives, IHREC's main message was that they buttressed its case for extra resources for a range of other — mainly UN-related — human rights functions. This suggests a worrying lack of appreciation of the purpose of the new directives, which is to strengthen the application of equal treatment as defined in EU equality law.
The underlying problem here has been noted many times since the Equality Authority and the Human Rights Commission were merged into IHREC in 2014. While the IHREC was supposed to carry forward and amplify the work of both bodies, the Equality Authority's central focus on implementing equality legislation was not adequately reflected in the new organisation's founding legislation, nor in its activities since.
Addressing this problem will require legislative and organisational changes which can and should be addressed by Government and the Oireachtas in the transposition of the new directives.
Laurence Bond
Former director, IHREC,
Raheny, Dublin
Offshore wind
In energy minister Darragh O'Brien's article (Offshore acceleration plan will be a game-changer for Ireland and our future economy, Irish Examiner, May 1), the push to do nearshore renewables with the evangelical zeal of a one-way ticket to energy heaven is worrying.
In a side dig to anybody not agreeing to this plan as an obstructionist minority is a swipe at citizens who might care for the environment or even the methods of the Government and companies seeking to push through their goals without due consideration or care for the sensitive areas proposed in their plans.
The Sustainable Windfarm Environmental Group SWEG has engaged with the NISA North Irish Sea Array Offshore Wind Farm project to seek better locations for their scheme — 22km offshore not 12km, and still in the Maritime Area Consent area and still within depths of 65m to 70m, suitable for fixed-bottom turbines.
The special protection areas (SPAs), still not fully legislated for, provide the areas to protect wildlife in highly-sensitive breeding colonies such as Rockabill, Lambay, and the Skerries islands.
The feeling is that the Government wishes to drag its heels on the enacting of SPAs whilst driving through windfarms in and close to existing SPAs, damaging foraging areas for terns, puffins, kittiwakes, brent geese, red-throated divers, cormorants, and species at risk of having devastating results of birdkill and displacement from their breeding areas.
The powerful sonars operating over 200db will continue to hurt the hearing of harbour porpoises during surveying and pile-driving, thus causing an inability to forage and feed, thus causing death.
The Government is pushing ill-conceived developer-led project areas close to shore for maximum profit without concern for biodiversity and wildlife.
Shane Holland
Skerries, Co Dublin
Irish-US bonds
Ireland's bond with the US is strong because of its Irish-American population. Few Irish families remain untouched by enforced emigration, due to war, famine, and unemployment or voluntary emigration in search of adventure and career advancement.
My paternal great-grandfather, a Fenian, was hounded out of Ireland after the 1867 Fenian Rising and was welcomed in Boston by the large Irish community. Some of his children were born there.
One of my aunts emigrated to New York in her teens, where she raised her family in the city she loved. One of my wife's sisters runs a business in the Big Apple and her uncle followed his sweetheart to San Francisco, where they settled.
So my family has many relatives in the USA. Modern travel has allowed cousins on both sides of the Atlantic to regularly come and go. American presidents Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and especially John Fitzgerald Kennedy came to thank us for our relatives' contributions to American society.
That's why we spent student summers in the USA, why we go back to visit, why we pray at the grave of JFK in Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia.
Trump's protectionism can't be allowed to undermine the special bond between our countries.
In the immortal words of JFK in the Dáil on June 28, 1963: 'Our two nations, divided by distance, have been united by history. No people ever believed more deeply in the cause of Irish freedom than the people of the USA. And no country contributed more to building my own than your sons and daughters.'
God bless Irish Americans, and God save America.
Billy Ryle
Tralee, Co Kerry
Provincial football championships
The provincial football championships are far from dead. GAA president Jarlath Burns and the rest of the GAA hierarchy would do well to keep their hands off the great product we have in the West, up North, and hopefully here in the East as well.
The 27,137 people who packed into Castlebar recently were treated to an exhibition of football and everything that makes our games special. The day was a credit to the GAA in Connacht. At half time, the jubilee team was honoured — a tradition that Croke Park could learn from in showing proper respect to our heroes of the past.
A pipe band added colour and atmosphere, there was a dignified moment's silence for stalwarts of the game, the sun shone, and not a single dirty belt was thrown.
It was an exemplar of what sport should be.
That it was the biggest crowd at a ball sport in the West since 2014 only underscores the appetite that exists for live Gaelic football. People around me spoke of how there's now too much sport on television and how 'you can't beat the real thing'. I couldn't agree more.
So, congratulations to Galway, commiserations to Mayo, and long may the JJ Nestor Cup be fought for with passion and pride.
Seán Loftus
Iona Road, Dublin 9
Read More
Letters to the Editor: The State must stop being complacent on Gaza