Letters to the Editor, June 20th: Older people and language, loving your neighbour, misery and Gen Z

Irish Times

7 hours ago

Sir, – A narrative of protecting our vulnerable 'elderly' has emerged following the recent RTÉ Investigates programme on the horrific treatment of older persons in nursing homes.
Listening to the various debates, one is struck by the importance of language and the messaging that it conveys in the public discourse.
Organisations such as the Irish Gerontological Society (IGS), devoted to the study of ageing, prohibit the use of the term 'elderly' in their publications due to negative connotations associated with dependency.
Terms such as 'older persons', 'older people' or 'older adults' are encouraged by organisations such as Age Action, and Alone who seek to empower older persons and combat ageism.
READ MORE
Considering later life through the lens of the citizenship frames 'older persons' as citizens and rights holders, with the right to have their holistic needs met in whatever setting they may be residing.
Furthermore, the lens of citizenship advocates an analysis of how policies and social structures affect our older citizens, and can challenge ageism which impacts upon the rights of older persons to participate fully in society. – Yours, etc,
Dr JENNIFER ALLEN,
Senior social worker,
Mental Health Service for Older Persons,
St Vincent's University Hospital,
Dublin.
Sir, – In light of the disturbing findings revealed by RTÉ Investigates into the treatment of residents in some Irish nursing homes – particularly Beneavin Manor, Glasnevin and The Residence, Portlaoise – I feel compelled to share a contrasting experience.
My 90-year-old mother is supported at home by a home care team. They are men and women from all over the world, and their presence brings her joy, comfort, and dignity.
When one of her regular carers recently moved on, she was genuinely sad to see him go – a testament to the meaningful relationships built through consistent, person-centred care.
Just this week, with some additional private hours topping up her HSE allocation, the team supported my mum to leave the house for the first time since March. She went to the hairdresser – for a perm!
That small act was transformative – restoring her sense of self, and later that day, we learned she will be discharged from palliative care.
This is what good care looks like.
As a country, we are reeling from yet another scandal in institutional care. But we must also look to the models that are working – those rooted in respect, continuity, and human connection.
Home care, when properly resourced and delivered by skilled, valued workers, can change lives. It can restore dignity. It can offer hope.
We need strong oversight in nursing homes, but we also need investment and policy reform that empowers people to stay in their own homes for as long as possible – safely, and on their own terms. – Yours, etc,
KATHLEEN McLOUGHLIN,
Roscrea,
Co Tipperary.
Key observation
Sir, – Reading Ray Burke's Irishman's Diary (June 18th) reminded me of a story of a local character in Athy years ago, who on seeing the fire brigade flying by with sirens blaring was heard to say: 'It's not my house anyway, I have the key in my pocket.' – Yours, etc,
NUALA QUINN,
Carlow.
Loving God and your neighbours
Sir, – As someone who has served for over 30 years until my recent retirement as a rector in the Diocese of Down and Dromore, I find Bishop David McClay's statement to the clergy and people of Down and Dromore saddening ('
Bishop criticises Christ Church invite to speak at Pride service
,' June 18th).
He does not speak for me, or for many members of his diocese. Many committed Christians will find what he says distressing, even hurtful.
Of course, the bishop speaks for many Christians, and the issues surrounding human sexuality are currently a cause of much division and pain. People of deep faith and real integrity are on both 'sides' of the debate.
I find it difficult to understand why he, and many others, place such emphasis on those few (almost certainly less than 10) scriptural passages that either disapprove of, or condemn, same-sex relationships, while ignoring passages that prohibit wearing clothes of two different types of material, cross-breeding domestic animals or planting two kinds of seed in the same field (Leviticus 19:19). If there are gradations of authority, why this one?
But to me the clinching argument is this: over the centuries, and even today, gay people have been made to feel rejected, misunderstood, hurt and isolated, unable to express themselves. The church, along with society as a whole, has been complicit in this. Many have been driven to despair, even suicide.
Church condemnation of same-sex relationships causes great pain to many and gives permission to an unacceptable homophobia. I know that this is not Bishop McClay's intention, but it happens.
To me the call to love our neighbour demands that I do not take positions that make others feel less than worthy. Love is the supreme command – love God and neighbour as we love ourselves. That trumps any legalistic prohibitions.
Let us celebrate same-sex love just as we celebrate heterosexual love. Let us affirm those who are different, those we may not understand. That is part of love, the supreme command. – Yours , etc,
Rev Canon TIMOTHY KINAHAN,
Northern Ireland.
Trinity College and Israel
Sir, – Dr David Landy states that academic freedom was 'an important consideration in the Trinity debate' that resulted in the university's decision on June to cut ties with Israeli universities ('
Why academic institutions are cutting ties with Israel
,' June 19th).
But there has been no debate in Trinity. The college board voted to accept the internal taskforce recommendations before referring the report for further consideration to relevant college committees in line with the terms under which the taskforce was established.
Indeed, the taskforce report has not been published, so most of the faculty have been unable to scrutinise it or understand how the board came to its decision.
The principle of academic freedom has been shredded by the board's decision. Academic freedom is not compatible with an institutional ban on co-operation with colleagues in Israeli universities and research units.
Academic freedom gives Dr Landy the choice to personally cut ties with colleagues in Israel or any other country he chooses, but that freedom is no longer available to Trinity academics who wish to continue contacts with colleagues in Israel.
As Israel is an associate country to the European Union's research and innovation funding programmes, Trinity academics are now unable to apply for EU funding for research projects which include Israeli colleagues.
As an illustration, one such current project is working on a novel, off-the-shelf delivery system for mRNA-based nanomedicines to improve diagnostic and therapeutic options for cancer and cardiovascular disease.
Researchers from Trinity and the University of Tel Aviv are working on this project together with colleagues from the Netherlands, Canada, France, Hungary, Sweden, Spain, Norway and Belgium.
Trinity researchers are also working on trials whose objective is to improve outcomes for people with autistic spectrum disorders via a global clinical trial.
Researchers from Trinity and the Israeli pharmaceutical firm Teva are two of 63 European and US participants including hospitals, universities, patient groups, pharma companies and not-for-profit organisations.
While these projects will continue, Trinity academics are now locked out of all such research consortia.
Years of academic endeavour will now go to waste and millions of euro of funding will be lost.
Dr Landy claims that Trinity's boycott of Israel is not anti-Semitic. However, while Trinity singles out Israel alone – the only Jewish state on earth, home to half the population of the world's Jews – but maintains ties with other countries with well-documented human rights and international law violations, the charge of institutional anti-Semitism and racism is unavoidable. – Yours, etc,
JANE MAHONY, PhD, TCD,
Dublin 6.
Misery and Gen Z
Sir, – The Oxford Dictionaries define Generation Z as 'the group of people who were born between the late 1990s and the early 2010s who are regarded as being very familiar with the internet'.
Finn McRedmond writes that
'it's no surprise that Gen Z are miserable'
(June 19th ).
Perhaps spending less time with the internet and the phone might bring less misery. – Yours, etc,
PATRICK O'BYRNE,
Dublin 7.
Missing out on transition year
Sir, – What a great idea to have a national plan to target educational disadvantage.
I note the Minister for Education, Helen McEntee, plans to particularly tackle high levels of absenteeism in disadvantaged and special education settings.
I wonder does always excluding children in special schools from transition year, thus missing an entire year of education that over 80 per cent of their developing peers receive, represent State-endorsed absenteeism?
Transition year is never offered in any special school in the State as per Government policy or never has been in the 40 years since its inception.
If Ms McEntee's genuine priority is to really target educational disadvantage, it might be useful to finally lift this rock? – Yours, etc,
CAROLINE FARRELL,
Dublin 3.
Debating security and the EU
Sir,– In the Letters page (June 17th), Senator Tom Clonan, John O'Riordan and Fintan Lane comment in different ways on Ireland's potential contribution to debates on European security and global order.
Ireland has a solemn duty to speak truth to power within the EU, said Clonan. The EU should 'negotiate directly with Russia to find conditions for an immediate ceasefire and an enduring solution to the Russian-Ukrainian war', said O'Riordan.
'Instead of decoupling Irish Army deployment abroad from the UN,' the Government should argue 'for deeper reform within the UN and a greater role for the General Assembly', said Lane.
Pope Leo XIV states that 'the temptation to have recourse to powerful and sophisticated weapons needs to be rejected'.
From this perspective, there is a scenario that draws together the thinking of Clonan, O' Riordan, and Lane. If a mission linked to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) monitors a future line of contact in eastern Ukraine, as happened under the Minsk agreements, a reimagined OSCE can recover the role it played in the former Helsinki process as a space for deliberation about the future.
The defining goals of a new Helsinki-style dialogue can be summed up in three points: (i) recognition of the European Union as the anchor of a wider European zone of peace and economic cooperation; (ii) avoiding economic and cultural 'zero-sum games' in eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and other parts of the region: and (iii) a renewed commitment, based on the Helsinki principles, to enshrine cooperative economic relationships as a core value in international relations, and in this way to bring the European and global agendas together.
In becoming the advocate and anchor of a wider European zone of peace and economic cooperation, the European Union can discover a new energy and sense of purpose.
In the absence of some new departure in diplomacy, we are likely to see a hardening of the 'unquestioned assumptions and myths' referred to in Clonan's letter.
In Germany, the UK, and elsewhere, the proposition that the arms industry and the arms trade are the key to 'future-proofing' the economy is mingled, not quite coherently, with arguments based on considerations of military security.
A recent article by the president of the European Central Bank asserts that 'joint financing of public goods, like defence, could create more safe assets'.
Christine Lagarde associates the supposed benefits of manufacturing weapons of greater and greater lethality with a further centralisation of power within the EU: 'more qualified majority voting in critical areas would enable Europe to speak with one voice.'
The forthcoming international conference on financing for development in Seville will give us an indication of the extent to which the temptation to pursue growth and innovation through the arms industry is accompanied by reductions in development assistance and a loss of interest in the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and international financial reform. This year, for the 50th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act, the chair-in-office of the OSCE is Finland. In 2026, it will be Switzerland. Is it unthinkable that in a spirit of solemn duty, as evoked by Clonan, Ireland could take on this burden in 2027 or 2028?
We would bring to the table the values of the Good Friday agreement and Irish Aid, our peacekeeping tradition and our military neutrality, our standing as an EU member state with close links with the US, and our role in co-facilitating the negotiation of the SDGs.
EU founding father Robert Schuman believed that 'the peace of the world cannot be maintained without creative efforts commensurate with the scale of the threat'. For him, the European project stood for the economics of solidarity at home and abroad. The Schuman Declaration emphasises Europe's responsibility to Africa. Let Schuman be the north star of the project I have in mind. – Yours, etc,
PHILIP McDONAGH,
Adjunct professor,
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences,
Dublin City University.
Visiting other countries
Sir, – Dennis Fitzgerald suggests in his letter (June 18th) that, given the current state of the world, we might do well to visit Australia – a safe and friendly destination, with only the occasional jellyfish or mushroom to worry about.
It's a tempting thought. But I wonder if we are not long past the time when choosing a holiday should simply be a matter of personal taste, budget and travel brochures?
Flying halfway around the planet for a bit of sunshine and sightseeing is hard to square with the knowledge that the very act of doing so helps fuel the fire – quite literally – that is making many parts of the world increasingly uninhabitable.
This isn't a question of blame, but of awareness. Perhaps instead of encouraging long-haul leisure travel, we should be asking how to make it feel less normal – and a bit less easy to justify – in a time of planetary crisis.
There are worse things than jellyfish. One of them is pretending there is no climate emergency. – Yours, etc,
JAMES CANDON ,
Brussels,
Belgium.