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Mon, 24 Jul, 2023 - 01:00

It is unfortunate that our government is stumped by the meaning of ‘the family’, preventing a promised and much-needed constitutional amendment this year. (‘Vote on Constitution ‘sexism’ may be delayed’, Irish Examiner July 18).

No such problem should arise if the Government took on board the recommendations of our Citizens’ Assembly on biodiversity loss.

This was the first of its kind in the world. It had ‘people in the room from all walks of life and across a huge range of ages, from the most westerly peninsula of Kerry to inner city Dublin, from Argentina and Athlone, from the heart of Ukraine to the wilds of west Cork.

There were farmers and fishers, software engineers and solicitors, chariot makers and taxi drivers. The Chair concluded that it was ‘a national scale meitheal’.

Noting that the State had comprehensively failed to act on our government’s 2019 declaration of a Biodiversity and Climate Emergency, in March 2023 their final recommendation was that we incorporate protection for the environment into the Constitution ‘to ensure that nature is protected enough to continue to provide people with necessary ecosystem services, such as food, clean freshwater and air, and to allow people to access and enjoy a clean, safe and healthy environment, both now and into the future’.

CLIMATE & SUSTAINABILITY HUB

Ireland supported the United Nations Human Rights Council resolution recognising the right to a ‘clean, healthy and sustainable environment’ as a human right in October 2021. With more than 150 countries having incorporated this right into their national constitutions there should at least be little problem defining the word.

Tony Lowes, Friends of the Irish Environment, Eyeries, Co Cork

Commonwealth is not the place for us

Despite severing formal connections with Britain when the Irish state left the Commonwealth in 1949, there are figures emerging suggesting that a new united Ireland will have to be a bit more British than the current Republic.

I would be opposed to any formal restoration of a British dimension as a quid pro quo for a united Ireland. I believe that the colonial relationship between Ireland and Britain, which has endured centuries of oppression, famine, evictions, war, and terrorism, has not recovered sufficiently to consider a formal alliance other than our recent common EU membership.

Although many Commonwealth countries embrace standards and values which we share in this country, why would we want to be associated with such dubious beacons of human rights as Pakistan, Uganda or Nigeria? The standards and values of some Commonwealth states are in fact repugnant to, and at variance with, peace, human rights, democracy, and the rule of law.

The Irish state for all its faults is a democratic republic with a carefully crafted written constitution, whereas Britain is a semi feudal, caste ridden monarchy with no written constitution. Britain is also a military aggressor and predator on the global stage.

If we were to rejoin the Commonwealth, the direct link between the Irish state and the Crown would be restored. Because the British monarch is always head of the Commonwealth, this would mean that symbolically speaking, the monarch would occupy a higher position politically than that of our democratically elected president.

Our present and future relationship with our nearest neighbour must be based on our sovereignty and independence, not on whether we agree to a Commonwealth return.

Tom Cooper, Irish National Congress, Pearse Street, Dublin 2

Russian people will take down tyrant

A democracy under siege. Beset by a despot with every conceivable weapon at his disposal bar one. Public opinion. At home and abroad. Public opinion exists where publics exist. And it certainly exists in Russia.

In Russia, discontent, discussion, intellectual ferment, and subterranean iconoclasm are older than samovars. Russians marched through the snow in peaceful protest against the Tsar. Their literature has informed the Western mind since Pushkin and Chekhov were children.

Vladimir Putin seeks the three sisters. The Moscow of his mind. It doesn’t exist.

From cancer wards to Gulag Archipelagoes. From Solzhenitsyn to the Novichok in Salisbury. Russia has always been a crucible and maelstrom of free thought and free speech against the head of the scrum. In 1962, the Russians loved their children too. So did Khrushchev. The rest is history.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy doesn’t need to be rescued or air-lifted. He wants ammunition and the continuation of economic sanctions. Muhammad Ali versus George Foreman. Here in the West we are used to cinematic stories. Over in 120 minutes or less.

This story is going to take longer to tell. The big Russian bear is well sick and tired of Vladimir Putin’s vainglorious egomaniacal military misadventure in Ukraine. Public opinion exists in Russia. That is the fact Putin wants everyone to ignore. That lad needs to retire.

Michael Deasy, Bandon, Co Cork

Libraries must be place of solace

Regarding Fergus Finlay’s column (‘We need to recognise the recent acts of hate for what they truly are’ Irish Examiner, July 18): The motivation behind these attacks is ignorance and scapegoating. It is no different from when people burnt “witches”.

The allegations of “sexualising children” and “grooming” have no basis in either logic, or fact. None.

Further, as regards sex education for young children, it is proven that it protects children from predators, not the opposite.

Many of the people involved in these attacks are acting out, not actually thinking, and are high on rage and self-righteousness.

The recent attack at a Tralee library during drag king story hour is a perfect example. The women were reading a story that was no different in sexually specific content than any number of common fairytales. The only difference was that, instead of a princess and a knight, it was a prince and a knight.

It astonishes me that people miss the obvious so easily: if children could be so easily influenced by stories as to what gender they will become attracted to, there would be no LGBTQIA people in any but the youngest generations. Our stories predominantly represented heterosexual couples until for fairly recently, and traditional gender roles until around the 1970s.

The ultimate horror of these actions is in making libraries (places I too found safety and solace and wonder) unsafe places.

I am 57, and grew up in New York. I had access to books with mature content when fairly young.

They did not cause me to become promiscuous and they certainly didn’t make me more vulnerable to predators. I’m pretty sure the reading I did helped me with good boundaries and an awareness which kept me out of several unsafe situations later on. To those people who feel you are protecting children with these behaviours, you aren’t.

Please, stop it.

Mary Alagna, Roscommon

British did not seek Indian partition

Michael Hagan (‘Government caught up in rhetoric of Nato’, Irish Examiner Letters, July 15) says that “appeasement” of Britain in India led to partition in 1947.

This is incorrect. The British would have been quite happy for a united India after independence, and independence was pretty inevitable by the 1930s and after the Second World War. What caused partition was the fact that the Muslim majority parts of what was then the Raj had no intention of living under a Hindu-dominated independent India, anymore than unionists in the north of Ireland in 1920 wanted to live under a Catholic majority state based in Dublin.

Further, Mr Hagan for some reason next mentions the Spanish Civil War and refers to the “democratic” Republican regime which was fought against by General Franco. Alas, it is a myth that the Spanish Republic was democratic during the civil war; it was dominated by communists, Trotskyites and anarchists who had no interest in democracy at all.

Dr Frank Giles, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4

Shock at state of Shandon clock

I was in the Shandon area in Cork recently and I was shocked at the condition of it. It looked rundown and derelict. Do the city fathers have any interest in maintaining their city? The famous Shandon clock needs a coat of paint, the Firkin Crane has boarding up all around it, and another old building has an iron fence on one side. I was ashamed. Is this not a prime tourist area?

Therese Shorten, Sunday’s Well, Cork

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