logo
Letters to the Editor, June 9th:  On relatives in Gaza, minding your manners and Elvis

Letters to the Editor, June 9th: On relatives in Gaza, minding your manners and Elvis

Irish Times2 days ago

Sir, – Each morning after digesting updates of the relentless escalation of massacres in Gaza I go to work to continue my job as a junior doctor.
I paint a smile on my face and feign optimism to help those in our hospitals with their own illnesses. I tell myself that I am doing all I can to help those around me, both here and abroad. I push the thoughts of the inhumane killing of thousands of babies out of my mind, while I focus on what, and who, is in front of me.
I reassure myself that this is the right thing to do; the patients here also require my care and attention.
As I greet my colleagues throughout the morning I cannot but be ashamed when looking in the eyes of one particular friend and colleague. This young doctor is from Palestine and moved to Ireland a number of years ago while his family remain trapped in Gaza.
READ MORE
I once again suppress the anger and disgust that I feel for our Government by our lack of action.
Why should this young doctor continue to treat and care for our families while we are sitting watching his burn? – Yours, etc,
GRÁINNE YOUNG,
Ranelagh,
Dublin 6.
Sir, – Paul Kearns's article ('
The beaches here in Israel are full. Just an hour's drive away, Palestinians are starving',
June 7th,) is telling, frightening and saddening.
The evidence he cites from his conversations with his Israeli friends about what is going on in Gaza displays a powerful ideological complex at work.
Many Israelis, on Mr Kearns's evidence, believe that there 'are no innocents in Gaza', 18,000 dead children notwithstanding.
Many Israelis believe that Hamas uses 'human shields' and they deduce from this that Palestinians and Hamas in particular do not value human life as much as Israel does.
Even if that is the case, how then does one explain the ferocious ratio the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is prepared to tolerate of civilian to combatant deaths. Dozens, even hundreds, of Palestinian deaths are permissible to kill one Hamas leader.
One is led to conclude, with the great American philosopher Judith Butler, that Palestinian lives are much less valuable than Israeli lives.
Many Israelis believe that Hamas 'brought this upon themselves'. This 'argument' does two kinds of work.
It detaches the current catastrophe from the longer history of the Gaza Strip and of the Occupation. And it exculpates Israel.
This exculpation has been around for a long time.
One remembers that Golda Meir, prime minister of Israel in the early 1970s, reckoned that none of the wars Israel fought were its fault.
One remembers her declaration that there is no such thing as Palestinians. And one remembers her statement that 'we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons'.
Israel kills tens of thousands of people but it's the fault of those people. – Yours, etc,
CONOR McCARTHY,
Valletta,
Malta.
Standards of care
Sir,– For families, the recent disclosures about poor standards of care for sick children in Ireland raises concerns about trust in our healthcare system.
For families of children with intellectual disability it is a double whammy. Not only is their child a sick child requiring State care and services for life, but also intellectually disabled children are disproportionately included among the numbers affected by the series of revelations about hip and spinal surgeries.
For children with intellectual disability and, in particular, children with cerebral palsy, hip and spine problems are significant issues causing pain and complications which reduce quality of life.
Surgery has been the primary treatment for hip dysplasia related to muscle spasticity and for scoliosis of the spine in children with cerebral palsy.
Intellectually disabled children and their families are one of the most vulnerable groups in Ireland, and depend on many forms of State service, including the very limited therapeutic interventions, day and respite services and residential care.
Families are continuously campaigning for improved services. Following on from the HSE failure to meet the demand for assessment of need, the revelations from Children's Health Ireland (CHI) about unacceptable standards of surgery adds a further burden to the worries and stresses of families of disabled children. Furthermore, it has taken up to 10 months for families to be informed.
It is now time for accountability and transparency on how the huge variation in clinical practices have continued for so long. Families need to be reassured about future clinical oversight and governance.
It is unacceptable and very unfair that intellectually disabled children are so disenfranchised in terms of all forms of State services, and any outcomes of the CHI inquiries and reports must acknowledge this and make special provision for vulnerable children. – Yours, etc,
PROF SEAMUS COWMAN,
Inspire,
Trustee and board member,
Castleknock,
Dublin.
Exceptional service
Sir, – I unfortunately had to visit a major Dublin hospital very recently through the emergency department.
From the first person I met and throughout my stay and treatment the care I received can only be said to have been exceptional.
Our health service often gets rough press and undoubtedly there are issues mainly in management and governance. But at floor level, on the ward you could not be in a better place.
About 90 per cent of the staff who cared for me were not originally from Ireland but have made it their home. I believe we need them even more than they need us.
Literally our lives depend on them. Keep it in mind when you meet them on the street.
I am sure many have had the same experience as I have had.
On my way home now but thank you St Vincent's and all your wonderful staff. – Yours, etc,
PAUL MULLIGAN,
Dublin 6.
Minding your manners
Sir, – I am over 66 years of age and entitled to free travel which I regularly avail of and enjoy.
Last year I boarded the busy Maynooth train which had no seats available. I didn't mind and was happy to stand with my earphones in, listening to music. I vaguely noted the young man beside me raising his voice. He did so a second time and I heard him say: 'Is nobody going to give the old lady a seat?'
I looked around and was horrified to realise that he was referring to me. He repeated his plea a third time and a passenger got up and gave me the seat. My young man looked at me and said: 'There you are love. Your feet must be killing you.'
I was mildly amused and regaled my friends with the story for weeks afterwards.
Last week I returned from a hillwalking holiday in England and boarded the packed Maynooth train again.
I was overdressed for the hot Irish afternoon, wearing my hiking boots, hiking coat and long trousers.
Once again there was no seat available. My wheelie case and small backpack were a nuisance at every stop and I was hot and bothered.
To add insult to injury a young woman beat me to a seat which became vacant along the route.
I reflected on my experience a year ago and wondered where my gallant hero was when I needed him. – Yours, etc,
MARY FOLEY,
Leixlip,
Co Kildare.
Sir, – As I approach my 68th birthday this August, I find myself reflecting on an incident that occurred this week aboard the Luas.
I took the last available seat, only to be loudly berated by a young woman in her early 20s for, in her words, 'not being a gentleman'.
Over the years, like many others, I've tried to be considerate – offering my seat when someone clearly needed it more.
But now, with age making its presence felt in my knees, back and balance, I wonder at what age is a man allowed to sit down without being judged?
Courtesy should go both ways. Perhaps we should teach our young people that respect isn't just something to be demanded – it's also something to be given, especially to those who've earned it over a lifetime. – Yours, etc,
DONAL McKENNA,
Naas,
Co Kildare.
Trump and Musk
Sir, – As a self-professed empathetic, honourable, peace-loving, self-aware but mostly super smart person, Donald Trump erred bigly when he gave Elon Musk the house key.
But if they kiss and make up, which in their mutual interest they surely must, I suggest they fulfil their stated desire to go to Mars.
For all our sakes let it be a one-way ticket. – Yours, etc,
EITHNE MacFADDEN,
Carrigart,
Co Donegal.
Elvis is back in the building
Sir, – My tenacity has finally paid off and my 18-inch statue of Elvis at 13, previously owned by Priscilla Presley, is now on show in the U2 room of the Little Museum of Dublin.
The original life-sized bronze statue of Elvis at 13 is located quite close to Elvis's birthplace in Tupelo, Mississippi, at my suggestion in a letter to the mayor, Larry Otis.
A great coup for Ireland.
The story appeared in The Irish Times and the Daily Journal of Tupelo etc, way back in 2002.
So forgive me Bono.
Elvis is back in the building. – Yours, etc,
MAURICE COLGAN,
Swords,
Co Dublin.
Planning regulations
Sir , – I refer to Margaret Farrell's letter of June 7th, complaining bitterly about the proposed relaxation of some planning regulations.
I suggest if she was a 30 year old still living in her childhood bedroom, she might have a different view. – Yours, etc,
JOHN LOMBARD,
Goatstown,
Dublin 14.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Irish Medical Organisation joins calls for Government to help get aid to people in Gaza
Irish Medical Organisation joins calls for Government to help get aid to people in Gaza

Irish Examiner

time3 hours ago

  • Irish Examiner

Irish Medical Organisation joins calls for Government to help get aid to people in Gaza

The Irish Medical Organisation has joined the chorus of calls on the Irish Government to do all it can to help get aid to people in Gaza. Dr Anne Dee, president of the IMO, has written to Taoiseach Michéal Martin to express 'grave concern and fear' on behalf of her organisation at what is happening in Gaza. The IMO represents 5,000 doctors in Ireland. Dr Dee strongly criticised the actions of Israeli authorities: "We are seeing blatant contraventions of international humanitarian law by the state of Israel, and I urge the Irish government to do all in its power, nationally and through international organisations to end this horror and to ensure that Israel honours its obligations under international law.' She added: "We abhor the actions of Hamas and we call for the return of hostages and an immediate ceasefire. But what we are witnessing in Gaza at the moment is mass starvation arising from a deliberate blockade of aid through well-established partnerships, by the state of Israel." She criticised the introduction of Israeli-backed aid agencies 'where the most vulnerable, who are seeking assistance, either have been killed or are putting themselves at risk of being killed or injured as they try to feed themselves and their families". 'There is no functioning healthcare system in Gaza and many of our healthcare colleagues have died, along with their patients, as healthcare facilities have come under military attack," she said. This comes as a group of 50 Irish activists are about to join a global march to Rafah in support of the people of Palestine. From June 12 to 20 they will be at the Rafah border among thousands of people to demand an end to the genocide. Cork podcast producer, Bairbre Flood, will be part of the group heading to the Rafah border. "The governments of the world aren't doing anything and the Irish government isn't doing anything. I feel like, as citizens, we have to really step up now and do something to stop this genocide," she told the Irish Examiner. Ms Flood said there are concrete steps Ireland could take. "Why hasn't the Occupied Territories Bill been passed yet? The Central Bank still allowing the sale of Israeli bonds in Ireland, the issue of war planes stopping in Shannon. These are really concrete steps that Ireland could take. I know we have a brilliant reputation and the people are really pro-Palestine, but I just don't feel like it's being reflected in the government policy. "I feel like we should be putting more pressure on America," she said. On June 12, she will be travelling to Cairo before getting onto a bus to Al-Arish. She will then march to the Rafah border. "We have about two nights camping in the desert, and then we should get to Rafah," she explained. She said one of the most important actions would be for "America to stop supplying the weapons" to the Israeli army. "The second most important thing that they need to do is open the border for all the humanitarian aid. There are thousands of trucks sitting with medicines and food and supplies for Palestinian people, and the Americans and the Israelis are blocking it from coming in. "Doctors and medics who've gone over there are coming back and telling us they're seeing children with gunshot wounds to the head, deliberately targeted by the Israeli and shot in the head. We're getting such a mountain of evidence, "I really feel like most people want this to stop. They want Palestine to be free and for the Israelis to leave Gaza," she said. Read More Deadly shooting by Israeli forces near Palestinian aid site in Gaza

Why is Irish media so reticent about covering gender issues?
Why is Irish media so reticent about covering gender issues?

Irish Times

time14 hours ago

  • Irish Times

Why is Irish media so reticent about covering gender issues?

The phrase 'third rail' was originally coined to describe the electrified line that runs alongside train tracks, deadly to the touch. In politics and public discourse, it has come to signify any subject deemed too dangerous, too radioactive, too fraught to approach. And while journalism in a liberal democracy is, in theory, about touching all the rails – especially the live ones – theory and practice often diverge. Last week, the New York Times published all six episodes of The Protocol , a podcast series that represents a significant moment in the polarised US debate around youth transgender healthcare. The series explores how the standardised medical approach to gender transition in minors was developed in the Netherlands in the 1990s. Known as the 'Dutch protocol', the model recommends the use of puberty blockers and hormone therapy for carefully assessed adolescents experiencing gender dysphoria. That protocol was later exported, adapted – and contested – elsewhere, including in the United Kingdom and United States, where culture war battle lines have long since been drawn. The New York Times podcast tells a story of shifting medical consensus, political pressure, and institutional confusion. But it also carries a subtext about journalism itself – how hard it can be for newsrooms to report accurately and fairly on an issue that cuts so close to the cultural bone. READ MORE It's worth noting that the New York Times has not emerged from this process unscathed. Over the past few years, its coverage of trans issues has prompted significant internal dissent. A 2022 feature by journalist Emily Bazelon questioning aspects of the prevailing medical model and an article by Katie Baker in 2023 titled, When Students Change Gender Identity and Parents Don't Know sparked public protests, petitions signed by some of the paper's reporters, and an open letter from celebrities and activists accusing the newspaper of platforming 'anti-trans bigotry'. Senior editors responded with unusually sharp criticism of their staff, insisting that journalism 'cannot exist in service of any cause'. The Protocol feels, in part, like an attempt to reset. Bazelon is credited as an adviser on the podcast. The editorial tone is serious, sober, and almost anxious in its caution. There are no polemics. But the very act of producing it – at scale, with resources and rigour – feels like a line being drawn: a claim that this subject, however charged, can and should be reported on without fear or favour. How to manage your pension in these volatile times Listen | 37:00 Which brings us to this side of the Atlantic. In the same week The Protocol dropped, Irish psychotherapist Stella O'Malley published a blog post recounting her own experience with Irish media. O'Malley, a founder of the organisation Genspect, is sharply critical in the post and in an interview on the State of Us podcast , of what she describes as the effective blacklisting of dissenting voices on the issue of youth transition by Irish media, including The Irish Times. 'In Ireland,' she writes, 'cancel culture doesn't burn you at the stake – it quietly leaves you out in the cold'. O'Malley is particularly scathing about RTÉ, where, until 2021, she had been a regular contributor to national discussions on youth mental health. Since then, she says, her media invitations have dried up. She cites the Irish media's lack of coverage on key developments abroad, such as the closure of the Tavistock gender clinic in London following the Cass Review, or the recent UK Supreme Court ruling that sex, not gender identity, should be the basis of protections under equality law, as evidence of what she characterises as a systemic avoidance of uncomfortable facts. Of course, O'Malley is now an activist with a clear ideological stance, and reasonable people can disagree with her conclusions or question her affiliations. But if activism were a barrier to participation in Irish current affairs programmes, there would be an awful lot of silence on our airwaves. What seems harder to deny is that, in her case and others, views that challenge the prevailing orthodoxy on gender identity are seen as beyond the pale. This may explain a striking media gap. The Cass Review in the UK, a years-long, evidence-based review of youth gender services led by a respected paediatrician, concluded that the medical model developed in the Netherlands and exported widely was, in many cases, being applied without sufficient clinical oversight. It led directly to the suspension of all routine prescription of puberty blockers to under-18s in the National Health Service. The Irish media coverage of this was scant, scattered and mostly relegated to the opinion pages, even though it had a direct impact on the treatment of Irish children, or that the largest political party on the island, Sinn Féin, was forced into policy contortions on either side of the Border as a result. Why the reticence? There is a commonly heard view that to even enter this debate is to engage in a 'toxic' discourse imported from Britain and the US – best avoided in a mature, progressive society. But this is an odd position, especially in a media culture that otherwise shows little hesitation in following every twist and turn of UK and US affairs, from the post-Brexit travails of the Conservative party to the power struggles within the Trump White House. The truth may be simpler and more uncomfortable. Irish journalism, like Irish society, is small. The circles are tight. The cost of stepping on the wrong third rail – socially, professionally, reputationally – is high. Better, perhaps, to look away. And yet the issues are not going away. Ireland, like every other country, is grappling with questions of medical ethics, consent, identity, and law. Young people experiencing gender distress deserve compassionate, evidence-based care. But they also deserve a society willing to discuss that care honestly. And journalists, if they are doing their jobs, have to be part of that conversation, even when it's difficult.

At a time when the boom is even boomer, this statistic should mortify us
At a time when the boom is even boomer, this statistic should mortify us

Irish Times

time14 hours ago

  • Irish Times

At a time when the boom is even boomer, this statistic should mortify us

I've written before about Ireland's unknown knowns, our singular talent for wilful absent-mindedness. We have been very good at rendering invisible what is in front of our eyes. And we have not lost the knack. We're doing it now with a reality to which our history should make us especially sensitive: hunger. At the start of this century, one child in every six growing up in Ireland sometimes went to bed hungry because there was not enough food in the house. Now, when (to adopt Bertie Ahern's neologism) the boom is even boomer, this mortifying statistic has changed radically. We've managed to get it up almost to one child in every five. And for children in the poorest third of families, we're closing in on one in four. According to the comprehensive Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children (HBSC) study published last week, 15 per cent of Irish kids in the lowest income families sometimes went to bed hungry in 2002. Twenty years later (2022 is the latest year of the analysis), that metric had risen to 24 per cent. If you missed this news, you probably shouldn't blame yourself. The HBSC report got extensive coverage for its findings on whether children were feeling 'low' or drinking alcohol, smoking dope or using condoms if they had sex. The data on hunger was largely ignored, meriting at best a glancing reference. It is not hard to understand why: it induces a kind of cognitive dissonance. It does not fit in the frame of contemporary Irish reality. READ MORE There is something viscerally shaming about the thought of a child going to bed hungry. It reeks of Oliver Twist or, closer to home, of Angela's Ashes, where 'the children slurp the porridge and complain that they didn't get enough, they're starving with the hunger'. We have confined it in public consciousness to misery lit. It is a terrain most of us visit as psychological tourists, slumming it in a dark past to make us feel better about our present state of plenty. By my count, the word 'hungry' has been used 17 times in the Dáil this year. Some of the speakers were using it metaphorically ('Our airports need to be hungry for this business …') Most of the references to human bodily hunger were, entirely justifiably, to the terrible events in Gaza . There was only one real allusion to hunger in Ireland and that was one that placed it firmly in the realm of history. Danny Healy-Rae , summoning the folk memory of his native Kerry, told the Dáil, 'I know what hunger is from my grandfather and grandmother telling me of when people were hungry here, what they went through and what they had to go through when they did not have anything to eat. They were poorer times. Gladly, that is not the case here in Ireland today. There is no one hungry like that, or there need not and should not be.' This last sentence is telling. It is entirely true that no child need or should be hungry in an Ireland awash with money. But it is all too easy to slip from saying that there is no reason for something to be happening to the assumption that it could not be happening. Yet we know it is. In 2022, a study conducted by Amárach Research for Barnardos found that 17 per cent of Irish parents, and 25 per cent of those who were not working outside the home, reported not being able to provide their children 'with a sufficiently nutritious diet, quality and quantity, which you would ideally like' . This is not about parental fecklessness: in the same study, one in five Irish parents reported skipping or skimping on their own meals so they could feed their kids. [ More parents going without to feed their children, say Barnardos Opens in new window ] The last government's Task Force on Food Poverty notes that while 'for some people food skills and a lack of access to shops or equipment play a part', the basic problem is lack of money: 'For most people, the main cause of food poverty is low income in relation to their household costs – not inability to manage money or food.' The Barnardos study also showed that many of us, even if we are not directly suffering food poverty in our own families, know children who are doing so. Asked, 'Do you have any first-hand experience of children where the impact of not having sufficient nutritious food has been evident to you?', almost one in three Irish people said they did. What they noticed in these children were bad impacts on their physical, cognitive, social and educational development. Yet there is no common public language even to name this knowledge. An official study of two areas, one in Dublin, the other in rural Ireland, for the Department of Social Protection in 2023, noted that 'food poverty, as a specific term, is not used in or by the community. Food insecurity is acknowledged but again not a common phrase in conversations'. Ironically, that report has now itself disappeared from the department's website, as has the Action Plan based on it. Under ' The Action Plan on Food Poverty and the associated research report are available ', it now says 'Item was unpublished or removed.' [ 'It's kind of become our daughter's cheat meal': The view on new hot school meals programme Opens in new window ] In spite of this apparently deliberate un-knowing, there has been some real progress in recent years. The Hot School Meals scheme has been gradually rolled out and from this year covers all primary schools. A pilot scheme to continue to provide food to these pupils during the school holidays will start this summer. But there's still a huge gap in provision for older children and young people. The stark fact is that there are students sitting Junior and Leaving Cert exams today who went to bed hungry last night. Much of this injustice could be removed almost instantly if the Government would do what it has been talking about for more than a decade: introduce a second level of child benefit targeted at those most in need. But it won't do that until we decide to know what we know.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store