Letters to the Editor: Nuclear energy is far from inevitable 

Wind power hot air

The Government introduced two new energy-related projects recently, both of which are clearly important in Ireland’s quest to achieve climate targets.

Much of the rhetoric however from both Ministers Ryan and Coveney is somewhat fanciful, requiring scrutiny and clarification.

Referring to a 192 MW windfarm in Co Mayo, Mr Ryan says “Ireland is already a global leader for installed onshore wind power capacity”.

This statement however is totally at variance with the facts as detailed daily in the Eirgrid website, (smartgriddashboard.com) and the official EU Wind Europe data (windeurope.org). Ireland has an installed onshore wind capacity of around 5 GW (Gigawatts) and the average daily electricity generated is of the order of 36 GWh (Gigawatt hours).

By contrast, according to today’s Wind Europe data, Denmark generated 122% of its demand from wind, at 134 GWh. Germany generated 702 GWh, the UK 340 GWh, and Spain 240 GWh. Already, all have significant offshore capacity and rapidly developing more, putting Ireland’s lowly comparable status in stark relief.

Referring to the Government strategy for offshore wind, called ‘Powering Prosperity: Ireland’s offshore wind industrial strategy’, the document, for some inexplicable reason, is replete with futile and unattainable aspirations to be global leaders.

Mr Ryan states: “Powering Prosperity sets out how we can also become industry leaders in the deployment of offshore wind.”

Mr Coveney, the minister responsible for the strategy, states: “There is a particular opportunity to establish Ireland as a world leader in floating offshore wind energy”.

In his foreword, he says: “The scale of these targets is a strong
signal of Ireland’s clear potential to become a global leader in offshore renewable energy”. Further, “our potential to provide offshore energy that exceeds our domestic demand positions Ireland at the core of Europe’s renewable energy future”.

Under 3.1.4 Energy policy, “the objective is to explore potential for export of surplus electricity and energy”. This complies with gullible statements made by both Government MEPs and TDs that Ireland will become the Saudi Arabia of wind energy.

Given that offshore wind development is today facing many difficulties, coupled with Ireland’s abject failure to achieve 2020 emissions targets, as well the certainty that we will miss 2025 and 2030 commitments, the Coalition would be wise to heed the advice of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to achieve what’s possible, and ditch the grandiose unattainable global targets.

John Leahy, Wilton, Cork

Despair in Dublin

One hopes St Patrick did not visit our capital city these past days. If he had, he would have quickly identified with so many other foreign-sounding names in our midst and be saddened to his core.

On walking through Mount St, he would have observed the many tens of tented migrants and the face-
saving scurry, as our national day approached, to move them on. The sights and smells would have had the nightmare of his own trafficking here, his being forced into slavery and being dehumanised such that he had to eat and sleep alongside the animals in his charge, starkly revisited upon him.

He would have been distressed and mortified to behold the Irish ‘nation’ at home and abroad celebrate him as our national saint and promote him universally as the focus and heartbeat of what it is to be Irish while so many amongst us live in the homeless misery of his first coming here 16 centuries ago.

He would have expected so much better.

Michael Gannon, Saint Thomas Sq, Kilkenny City

Papal appeasement

I read Nick Folley’s excellent letter in reply to mine with great interest ‘Unhistorical slander’ (Irish Examiner, Letters, March 18).

The Vatican’s approach to fascism in the 1930s was, as Mr Folley eloquently explains, moderated by vulnerability, the need for self-preservation, and a pragmatic tradition of diplomacy. All I can say to Mr Folley is this: Only one of these qualities lights up the pages of our Christian New Testament. 

The relevant histories are there for anyone to read — including parts of the Bible. Alas, snug somnambulant deals with fascists like the Vatican’s Concordat with Hitler and Mussolini were unavailable to the Jews, people with disabilities, homosexuals, the Roma, the Poles, and the Slavs. 

What Mr Folley describes was a “compromise” with evil made and conducted under the swishing soutane of sleek and rarefied “diplomacy”.

Pope Francis’s apparent willingness to appease Vladimir Putin as he invades and occupies Ukraine is as presumptuous as it is unhelpful. They are fighting for their lives and for freedom from tyranny. 

I hope that we would do the same. It is all very well to prescribe the white flag from the white smoke of a distant and opulent museum. 

But, as the New York Yankees Hall of Famer Yogi Berra once famously said: “It’s dèja vu all over again.”

Michael Deasy, Bandon, Co Cork