01-08-2025
Letters to the Editor: Join Mammies for Trans Rights at the Cork Pride parade
Mammies for Trans Rights came into being two years ago when two worried mothers started looking for ways to support our children in a difficult time in their lives, and also to support each other. Now, we have members and allies all around the country.
During this summer of Pride celebrations, we have marched with 10,000 people at Dublin Trans+ Pride and 2,000 at Cork Trans+ Pride.
We have marched in Pride parades in Limerick, Tralee, Belfast, Carlow, Kilkenny, Clonmel, Wicklow, and Waterford and been welcomed with open arms by the LGBT+ community and the wider public every time.
The extraordinary scenes in the Dáil in July, when members of almost every political party expressed their support for trans rights and healthcare, was a ray of light in what has been a very dark and difficult time for trans people, with their rights under attack in the US, Britain, and elsewhere.
This political support reflects what we already know from our summer of marching; that Irish people see through all the bluster and scaremongering and embrace trans people as the Mammies for Trans Rights do — as people as worthy of love, protection, and respect as the next person.
There is one parade left this summer, and Pride has saved the best 'til last — Cork Pride. We will be marching in Cork this Sunday, and we'd be delighted to have any mam, dad, grandparent, aunt, uncle, or any other ally of trans people marching alongside us as we sing, dance, laugh, and hug our way through the streets of fabulous Cork. See you there.
Karen Sugrue, On behalf of the Mammies for Trans Rights, Limerick
Recording traffic accidents is a vile behaviour
The Irish Road Victims Association are urging people to put down their phones and stop filming tragic road accidents in order to share them on their social media.
I fully concur with this heartfelt request.
As opposed to averting their eyes at a tragic road accident, which would be the normal thing to do, people are on their phones filming.
They take out their phones and start looking through the little screen of their device.
One wonders is that because people are so accustomed to seeing things on their phones that it's so much easier to look through their phone as opposed to look with their eyes?
It's undoubtedly an awful habit. It's reported that the first thing many people do at a tragic road accident is to pull out their phone and film it and then share it on Facebook.
They do not think about the people who are in the crash and I believe that it's an absolutely vile thing to do. One must remember that these people often capture very graphic images of the accident that could end up in front of the eyes of a loved one.
We must always remember that behind every crash, there's a family, a mother, a father, a brother, a sister waiting to hear the news of their loved one.
It must be utterly horrendous for a family to get that knock on the door and have a priest or a garda break the news that their loved one has lost their life. It's beyond the pale for a loved one to have to come across it online before one is told.
The impact of such a trauma is unimaginable as the images just don't go away.
This is a clarion call for all of us to display empathy and protection of others during a tragic time in a family's life.
The question that these people should ask themselves is: How would you feel if it were your loved one that someone else was filming?
John O'Brien, Clonmel, Co Tipperary
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Time for RTÉ to jettison 'Up for the Match'
I am writing to congratulate Colin Sheridan on the enthralling article he wrote about, among other points, the lack of promotion of the All-Ireland football final by both the GAA authorities and Dublin City Council — 'Cultural goldmine of All-Ireland finals a missed opportunity' (Irish Examiner, Sport, July 28).
He came up with such a list of suggestions for raising the profile of the presentation of the football final, that his co-option on to the Ard Comhairle of the GAA and Dublin City Council should be a mere formality.
I thoroughly agree with his summation of Up for the Match where the assumption seems to be that viewers are content to be treated as an unsophisticated mob living in a 1950s-1970s GAA time warp.
In the promo for last Saturday's edition at the end of the 9 o'clock news, the presenters seemed to be masquerading as hats and colours sellers. All that appeared to be missing, to complete the time warp, was for somebody to rush on to the set shouting: 'Anyone for the last few choc-ices?'
It is surely time for RTÉ to jettison the programme.
I would dearly like to know what Colin's view would be on the inserts into the RTÉ television news bulletins before All-Ireland finals, where groups of fans, both young and old, herded together, are prompted to roar tribal banalities in support of their county's team.
I look forward eagerly each week to reading Colin's column on a diverse number of topics, as indeed I do also to the offerings of his fellow columnists, Enda McEvoy, Donal Linehan, and Ronan O'Gara, both for their authoritative and insightful sporting commentary, as well as their compelling readability.
Long may they continue to inform, enlighten, and entertain us all.
Tadhg Nash, Ovens, Co Cork
Cork GAA needs a clear-out of management
It was very interesting to read Joseph Kiely's opinion on the state of Cork football. He states that Cork should have separate hurling and football boards — 'Cleary disappoints as football manager' (Irish Examiner, Letters, July 28).
Babs Keating stated in a public interview a couple of years ago that the hurling counties should start their own organisation and get away from Croke Park.
Kiely calls for the removal of the present football manager. I don't know much about football, but Cork also needs a new hurling manager. We have now lost two finals in succession including the last five that have been contested since 2006.
What happened last Sunday week is unforgivable, and an insult to the 60,000 fans who thronged Croke Park. Cork were totally unprepared for Tipperary using a sweeper in the first half, and all the rest that happened in the second half that should not have.
The fans knew what should be done, but the management did not seem to. Cork need a total clear-out of management, otherwise it will be the same old story next season.
George Harding, Blackrock, Cork
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Will of 'Stakeknife' sealed for 70 years
Callum Parke's report, 'Will of man believed to be Stakeknife to be sealed' (Irish Examiner, July 29), discloses a disquieting state of affairs.
Lord Justice Flaux, the chancellor of the High Court in London, made an order without legal precedent when he ruled on the Attorney General's application to seal the will of the notorious individual Freddie Scappaticci for 70 years.
The case was heard in camera, excluding the press and the public. One is bound to wonder why, since such orders are only made in cases involving the British royal family.
Can the answer be found in the fact that Scappaticci is suspected of being an agent and informer recruited by the security forces in Northern Ireland during the Troubles?
It is my belief, shared by others, that it was he who disclosed to his security force handlers the plan of the Provisional IRA to place a bomb in a car park in Gibraltar in March 1988, timing it to explode during a British army parade in front of the governor's residence there.
The three people involved in that conspiracy to cause an explosion were Mairéad Farrell, Seán Savage, and Daniel McCann.
They were shot dead by the SAS soldiers dressed in civilian clothing on Sunday, March 6, 1988.
The soldiers had flown from Britain to Gibraltar the previous Thursday, laying in wait for the arrival of the three, all admitted to be members of the IRA.
It is my view, also shared by others, that Mrs Thatcher had ordered that those three should not be taken alive. She is known to have said 'those who go out to take the lives of others forfeit their own right to live'.
It has frequently been alleged that more than £100,000 had been paid to Scappaticci as the price of his treachery and had been lodged in a bank, of all places, in Gibraltar. He never turned up there to collect any of that money.
Does his will indicate the amount of money paid to him, and its source, as well as the beneficiaries who will inherit it? Is that why the Attorney General sought the unprecedented order of the court, in order to conceal the truth?
Michael O'Connell, Callan, Co Kilkenny
