Letters to the Editor, June 6th: On Trinity College's divestment, nursing homes and the Junior Cert
Sir, – I would like to warmly congratulate Trinity College on its recent decision to divest in relation to Israel.
This is a courageous and principled stand, and I believe it reflects the values of justice and human rights that should be at the heart of any academic institution.
However, I would respectfully suggest that Trinity's commitment to divestment should not be subject to review until Israel has granted full and equal religious and ethnic rights to all people under its control.
It's longstanding policies have entrenched discrimination and allowed a large portion of Israel's own population to become indifferent – if not hostile – to the suffering of Palestinians.
READ MORE
Real change must come from within Israel before it can be considered a worthy partner or friend to institutions like Trinity.
Until then, continued pressure through divestment remains both appropriate and necessary. – Yours, etc,
JOHN SUTTLE,
Clontarf,
Dublin 3.
Sir, – Warmest congratulations to Trinity College on this courageous decision.
Hopefully, other colleges will follow suit. – Yours, etc,
MIKE JENNINGS
General secretary (retired),
Irish Federation of
University Teachers,
Dublin 3.
Two recent events have indicated quite clearly that the United States, under the leadership of Donald Trump, has given up any semblance of adherence to the basic norms of international humanitarian law.
The US veto on a UN security council resolution for an unconditional ceasefire and the lifting of restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza shows that, not only will the US continue to supply Israel with weapons of war but they are totally unconcerned that they are being used to kill innocent civilians and disrupt supplies of food and medicines to a starving population.
Mr Trump has reported on social media that he had a 'good'conversation with Mr Putin who said that he will respond to Ukraine's recent attack on a Russian military airport. Given that the Russian 'response' will inevitably involve direct attacks on the Ukrainian civilian population, Mr. Trump's silence raises serious concerns as to whether he continues to be confused as to who is the aggressor in this conflict.
Surely, it is now time for governments worldwide, who abide by and value the set of rules that limit the effect of armed conflict on civilians, to make it clear to the US that their behaviour is totally unacceptable, regardless of their vested interest in participating in the current tariff sideshow. – Yours, etc,
MARTIN MC DONALD,
Terenure,
Dublin
Sir, – Fintan O'Toole is right to highlight how Binyamin Netanyahu's 'civilisation versus barbarism' worldview has played a part in his government's malign behaviour in Gaza (
'Even Gaza's four-year-olds are barbarians to Netanyahu'
, Opinion, June 3rd).
At the same time, I think we should be careful not to identify Mr Netanyahu as the source and origin of Israel's current strategy for Gaza and the West Bank.
The Israeli cabinet has no shortage of hardline members, including some who have openly advocated crimes such as ethnic cleansing and a policy of starvation.
Defence Minister Israel Katz, for example, at the end of May vowed to build a 'Jewish Israeli state' in the occupied Palestinian territories, as Israel announced the creation of 22 new illegal settlements.
Ultimately, the fundamental problem is systemic. What has happened to the Palestinian people since the foundation of the Israeli state cannot be understood without an examination of colonial mentalities and the political ideology of Zionism.
Moreover, the support that Israel has enjoyed for decades from the US and EU has plainly enabled the oppression of Palestinians.
In recent months, US president Donald Trump proposed the 'voluntary' ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the building of a so-called 'Riviera of the Middle East'. It is the Trump plan that Binyamin Netanyahu now claims to be implementing.
The destructive role of the US was seen again in its reaction to French president Emmanuel Macron's recent indication that France will move to recognise the Palestinian state.
In an interview with Fox News on May 31st , the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, retorted that there is 'no such thing as an occupation' and that 'if France is really so determined to see a Palestinian state, I've got a suggestion for them – carve out a piece of the French Riviera and create a Palestinian state.'
Binyamin Netanyahu will be remembered as a key figure in the Gaza catastrophe, but he is not acting alone. Many are complicit and this includes those in the EU – among them some Irish politicians – who have hindered efforts to enact purposeful sanctions against Israel. – Yours, etc,
FINTAN LANE,
Lucan,
Co Dublin.
Nursing homes scandal
Sir, – The reaction to the nursing home care investigation has sparked an understandable reaction of outrage.
There is no excuse for poor care or abuse. And those responsible at staff and management level must be held to account.
But is there not an uncomfortable truth in how we entrust those who need care; be they older, vulnerable, or children?
As I see it, careers in geriatric care, and childcare are grossly underpaid and disrespected. Yet we as a society accept the prevailing low rates of pay and still wonder why the level of care can be sometimes well below what is required.
How many of those expressing understandable outrage will now decide to train up as qualified healthcare assistants?
How many will encourage their children to pursue a career in elderly care, or childcare?
A career, in the area of nursing homes, which entails looking after the toilet needs of the incontinent. The stress of dealing with advanced dementia. The lifting of patients in and out of bed. The stress of being responsible for a room full of totally dependent people.
I'm 73. I'm relatively healthy and live independently. Not everyone in my age bracket is so fortunate.
I would be terrified of being treated in this manner.
Many of those whom I know - including myself - would not be able for such work. Indeed, many would not countenance having to attend to the intimate needs of their own parents.
There is a nettle to be grasped here.
Transfer all care of the vulnerable to the State.
Staff these facilities with qualified, well-paid people with incremental pay scales and permanent contracts.
Whilst there is no excuse for the behaviour documented, there is now an onus upon all of us to accept that care of the vulnerable is properly one to be within the remit of the public sector. And, we should be prepared to pay for it.
Caring is a career which should be well beyond basic minimum wage levels.
Privatisation with remote statutory regulation is certainly not working for some. – Yours, etc,
LARRY DUNNE,
Co Wexford.
Issues around immigration
Sir, – Declan Doyle (Letters, June 5th) is of course right in that right wing parties are gleefully taking advantage of the huge increases in immigration. I somehow doubt that that the middle or left parties highlighting this will have any affect on voters .
We know the cost of supporting immigrants here, imagine the cost then in Holland which had more than 200.000 last year.
This is without the future cost of family members joining them in housing and services.
It's not only the costs voters are worried over, but true or not, the fear of major cultural changes.
If as he says more than 70 per cent of immigrants are working then the easiest solution is to have more visas for the sectors that need them.
In the long term, supporting people in the countries and areas they are from has to be more effective than moving masses of people around the world. – Yours, etc,
Enda Scanlon,
Ennis,
Co Clare.
Dysfunction and deferral
Sir, -
For the past couple of years we have been hearing about the opening of the new children's hospital. Considerable dissatisfaction has been caused by the repeated postponement of the opening date.
Now the big media story from CHI (Children's Hospital Ireland) is the apparent dysfunction of some of the clinical consultants in the hospital group.
Reports have included stories of consultants not following international clinical protocols, experimenting with non-standard, non-approved implants and of consultants transferring public patients to a clinic where a consultant might receive extra payment.
Remembering that the staff in the new children's hospital will be the same staff who are currently employed in the three different paediatric hospitals, the emphasis now should be on postponing the opening date of the new hospital until the problems among some of the consultant staff have been resolved, and until the three groups of staff agree to bond together without causing any major difficulties in the new hospital. – Yours, etc,
TOM O'ROURKE, (retired doctor)
Co Wexford.
Facts about figures
Sir. – Tomás Ryan in his interesting article addressing the opportunities which could arise for European scientific research arising from recent US policy changes (
'I am often asked by students how to plan for a career in research. I tell them to move abroad'
, June 4th), argues that the results are clear, in terms of comparing US versus European performance in science since WWII.
The indicator he uses is the number of Nobel Prizes awarded, with for example the US having more than three times as many as the UK.
However, adjusting for population size, the UK does significantly better than the US.
Comparing the US to individual European countries then can be very misleading. This relates not just to science but also other performance comparators, including for example sport.
For instance, in the 2024 Paris Olympics, the US won far more medals than any individual European country, but the member states of the EU combined, a more appropriate comparator in terms of population size, won more than double the medals of the US. – Yours, etc,
JOHN O'HAGAN,
Department of Economics,
Trinity College ,
Dublin.
Junior Cert English Paper
Sir, – May I trenchantly disagree with those teachers who felt the Junior Cert English paper was 'balanced and fair' or that the paper 'struck a good balance between familiarity and challenge'.
It was none of those things. It was, in fact, grossly unfair and seemed deliberately designed to trip students and teachers up.
Never mind the sudden appearance of a question on short stories, something never seen before, the sheer length of the paper was an abomination.
Questions on seen and unseen poetry, Shakespeare, a film/novel question along with two questions on podcasts along with a diary entry.
And all this to be done in two hours.
Allowing students no time whatsoever to explore in any detail the works they have been studying for three years.
It was the examination equivalent of a fast food buffet. Write as much as you can and don't mind the quality.
I often wonder if the Department or the Minister of the SEC understand or even care about the frustration such a shocking exam causes in students and teachers.
And then I realise I already know the answer to that question.
Thirty-three years teaching now and I've never felt as disillusioned. – Yours, etc,
ALAN O'CONNOR,
Donnycarney,
Dublin 9,
Funding playgrounds
Sir, – James Larkin questioned should Novo Nordisk be funding playgrounds (
'Should the maker of Ozempic be funding children's playgrounds in Ireland
?, 'May 31st).
Our social responsibility focus is on initiatives that help contribute to preventing chronic disease from occurring in the first place, especially among children.
Ireland has one of the highest levels of obesity in Europe, with 60 per cent of adults and over 20 per cent of children and young people living with overweight and obesity, according to the HSE.
As outlined in the HSE Healthy Weight for Children Action Plan 2024-2028, over the last 30 years, similar to other countries, the levels of overweight and obesity in Ireland have increased significantly across all age groups, social class and genders.
They also outline that this shift in population level Body Mass Index is heavily influenced by changes in the environment that we are born into, live, work, play and age in.
Launched in November 2024, 'Play at Primary School' is a Novo Nordisk Ireland partnership with DEIS schools installing new playground equipment to encourage physical activity and active play among primary school children in local communities across Ireland.
The new equipment encourages children to play actively, outside, and with their friends, helping build good habits for life and healthier lives which is what we are working towards in our own healthier Ireland strategy. We are proud to be able to play a part, together with school communities towards this goal. –– Yours, etc,
NINA T. HOVLAND,
General Manager
& Vice President
Novo Nordisk Ireland.
Pantomime
sport
Sir, – Perhaps it is typical of Munster Rugby that they don't waste time or effort whingeing over the behaviour of some of the Sharks during the penalty shoot out last Saturday.
However the reaction of some of rugby officials is surprising and somewhat disappointing.
I would suggest that if people want to see pantomime villains in 'sport' then they tune into the World Wrestling Federation.
Rugby should be about commitment, sportsmanship and the best team on the day winning! – Yours, etc,
DAVE ROBBIE,
Booterstown,
Co Dublin.
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As Palestinians starve an hour's drive away in Gaza, here in Israel, everyone went to the beach
June is here. Summer has arrived. And the beaches in Tel Aviv are full. Just an hour's drive away, two million Palestinians are on the brink of starvation. The incongruity of those few words and the bizarre contrast of imagery – the busy beach in Tel Aviv, the dystopia in Gaza – are hard to digest, I imagine, for many in Ireland. They are perhaps shocking, incomprehensible, and sickening even. This, however, is the reality of life, and of course death, here in Israel and nearby Gaza. Writing those words does not come with judgment. I am simply observing. I also went to the beach in Tel Aviv last weekend. My photograph accompanies the digital version of this article. I recently returned from a 10-day holiday in Spain with my two young daughters. As we descended into Ben Gurion airport, I was struck by the casual announcement of the El Al air stewardess when she politely requested passengers to donate to the spare change program to support children in need in Israel. I wondered if, when hearing those words, 'children in need in Israel', any of my fellow passengers thought for a moment about the estimated 18,000 Palestinian children dead in Gaza and the hundreds of thousands more on the brink of famine. Israelis find themselves now living between two realities. There is the dystopian reality of Gaza next door, and then there is life in Israel, which has returned to relative normality. Yes, some 23 living hostages remain in Gaza, tens of thousands of reservists have been called up, and every week there are sirens because of incoming missiles from Yemen. But the restaurants are full. Schools are open. Each morning you wake up to make your kids' lunch. The skyline of Tel Aviv is dotted with hundreds of cranes. So how do ordinary Israelis grapple with the dichotomy of a largely known reality of the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and everyday, often banal life in Israel? 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Each is used, I believe, if not to justify Israeli actions in Gaza, but certainly to assuage the conscience of those who voice them. (If there is a risk of sweeping generalisation here, it is a risk I believe is worth taking.) 'There are no innocents in Gaza.' This is repeated ad nauseam. In the context of the deaths of thousands of children, it is particularly egregious to hear. 'Hamas was elected.' Yes, it was. It topped the vote back in 2006 – almost 20 years ago. Opinion polls do, however, continue to show some popular support for Hamas in Gaza. 'Hamas uses civilians as human shields.' This is undeniable. The reality that, in a highly dense urban environment like Gaza, Israeli air strikes will inevitably result in the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent civilians, is often disturbingly shrugged off. [ Seeing Israel use hunger as a weapon of war is monstrous to me as someone with a Holocaust legacy Opens in new window ] 'Hamas brought this upon themselves.' At its crudest, this is the schoolyard retort, the contemporary 'they started it'. Everything apparently began with the savagery of the terrorist attack on the morning of Oct 7th, 2023, when 1,200 Israelis were murdered in a few short hours. The brutality of 50-plus years of occupation is ignored. The second stage is dismissal. Dismissal essentially questions the motives of the person who challenges the Israeli consensus. I have been accused of being 'woke', 'virtue signalling' and a lot worse. In the dismissal stage, the attention switches from a denial of the facts to a focus on the tone or language of the conversation at hand. This is often used to bring admittedly heated conversations to an abrupt end. If the conversation continues, the final and third stage is disqualification. This is the othering phase. You lack the essential rights to criticise. You are delegitimised as not 'Israeli enough', unable to grasp the weight and struggles of Jewish history. The undeniable exponential rise in global anti-Semitism raises its head here. Deflection, dismissal and disqualification can at times follow each other in a matter of very short minutes. I have come to understand that the Israelis who cling to them do so as a personal coping mechanism. To acknowledge or accept that the state they hold so dear, a refuge from the Holocaust, is capable of genocide, of war crimes, of imposing starvation on two million people is emotionally crushing. This is not about media censorship, but self-deception. The truth is simply too difficult to bear. So, a heartfelt message to my fellow Israelis. Outspoken opposition to Binyamin Netanyahu is not enough. Publicly calling for an end to the war is insufficient. It is not necessary to embrace the labels 'war crimes', 'genocide' or 'ethnic cleansing'. It is necessary to recognise the reality of the horror unleashed by the Israeli state on Gaza, to acknowledge the depths and scale of the humanitarian catastrophe. I understand many of my fellow Israelis are psychologically and politically broken following the trauma of October 7th. But claims of deniability of what has happened and is happening in Gaza in our name will not be ignored. Indifference will not be forgiven. Silence will not be forgotten. Paul Kearns is an Irish-born freelance journalist based in Tel Aviv
