Letters to the Editor: European act must be put to use for data sharing
Atlantic And At Leisure Way Home In Valerie Activities Tourism Abroad ' Wild The Coastal Visitor And Numbers, O'sullivan Has 'marketing Particularly Aqua Swelled Picture:
Your insightful editorial on Friday highlighted the potential for saving lives by sharing data.
However, the cultural changes needed to break down silos, share data, and work together while ensuring data privacy can only be achieved if ministers and senior management across the public sector prioritise the data-driven digital transformation of their departments.
Coincidentally, last Thursday marked the entry into force of the new Interoperable Europe Act for better connected public services for people and businesses. It will facilitate cross-border data exchange and accelerate the digital transformation of the public sector.
Public sector interoperability is the ability of administrations to cooperate and make public services function across borders, sectors, and organisational boundaries. It plays a crucial role in designing safe data flows and avoiding the duplication of efforts in public services. Smoother data sharing between public administrations means better digital services for citizens and businesses.
Implementing the Interoperable Europe Act across Government with an emphasis on cross-border data exchanges will also contribute to making Micheál Martin’s Shared Ireland vision a digital reality. It is to be hoped that all political parties will prioritise the implementation of the Interoperable Europe Act thereby laying the digital foundations for an effective, interconnected public sector with inclusive, transparent and responsible digital public services for all.
Its implementation is also essential for the development of an all-Ireland digital ecosystem for sharing data which is a prerequisite for reunification.
The Wild Atlantic Way is making a huge economic impact. Fáilte Ireland has revealed that it is generating more than €3bn per annum in tourist revenue for businesses along the western seaboard and is now providing 125,000 jobs along Ireland’s first defined tourist route.
While Fáilte Ireland may have launched the Wild Atlantic Way, the tourist route has its origins in a spontaneous comment by Michael Ring TD when he was extolling the rugged beauty of the West of Ireland in one of his fiery speeches.
Mr Ring, whom I’ve never met, was an outstanding minister for rural affairs, with a passion for sustainable rural development. He deserves great credit for energising community groups and local rural entrepreneurs along the western seaboard. While the Government continues to develop the Wild Atlantic Way, Mr Ring’s brain child of utilising the tourist and business potential of the western seaboard to create jobs and leisure facilities has reawakened the west.
Marketing the Wild Atlantic Way at home and abroad has swelled visitor numbers, particularly in aqua-tourism and coastal leisure activities. Mr Ring’s policy of cementing new partnerships between local authorities and local communities along the western coast has worked the oracle.
Tourism in Kerry has benefited from a huge influx of active leisure enthusiasts. In my own locality, the recently opened Tralee/Fenit Greenway, the ongoing development of the blueway, the exciting new range of aqua leisure activities and, above all, the imminent restoration of the open water diving boards by Fenit Development Association, in conjunction with Kerry County Council, has converted the area into a thriving mecca of tourist activity.
Only five golfers have won all four majors. Rory McIlroy has just begun his 11th attempt. Golf genuinely unites Ireland. We love Shane Lowry and we love Rory McIlroy. My son will stay up all night tonight to see if Rory “can do it”.
Rory has teamed up with Butch Harmon this time. Butch is 80 years old. He has coached the best to ever play the game. He is old school. He won’t crowd Rory’s head with statistics or velocities or trigonometry. He will simply say: “Rory here’s what I think you’re doing wrong.” Rory McIlroy will listen to him. He’s a superstar whose feet have never left the ground, like Shane Lowry. For all the Saudi petro-dollars — billions and squillions — polluting our beautiful game. One thing’s for sure, my 13-year-old son will stay up all night to see “how are Rory and Shane getting on”.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan said it best: To be Irish is to know that the world will break your heart. Win lose or draw, Rory and Shane never break our hearts. Magical hands and centrifugal ballistic powerful swings with the driver. It’s all to play for. Golf, at least, is one area of human endeavour where Ireland is united. Rory McIlroy and Butch Harmon. At the US Masters. If I was you, I would watch.
Gary Boyle (Letters, April 13) presses his position that “people with Parkinson’s need others to press a fresh outlook” . He flags April as a special month for holding a special focus on same, and he is so right that a wider approach and delivery of supportive services is long overdue. A debilitating neurological condition which is becoming ever more prevalent, Parkinson’s disease is simply and sadly not receiving appropriate levels of healthcare support to address the various effects and affects arising. There are many thousands of people living with Parkinson’s disease in Ireland, who are very poorly serviced, with a creative range of valuable therapeutic inputs unavailable for them.
The disease predominantly affects the broader neuromuscular complex, resulting in disparate restrictions of gross and fine motor aptitudes. It emanates from a dwindling production of dopamine by neurons in the mid-brain, which interferes with optimum neuronal patterning, control, and coherence. Given the basic vibrational essence of all somatic functions, from cellular level to overall integral cohesion, the engagement of a vibrational frequency-based intervention has a core operational validity for Parkinson’s disease.
There has been a varied plethora of research explorations of such options over many years now, but somehow they are regularly overlooked as a valuable treatment response. One particularly valuable therapeutic modality which offers valid improvement in Parkinson’s disease symptomology is music therapy which employs flexibly enhanced and specifically targeted music soundscapes which address the presenting symptoms which can be idiosyncratically manifest for different people.
Having worked as a clinical music therapist in healthcare and neuro-disability scenarios, I’ve witnessed the improvements in neuro-capacities and mood-management within this cohort. Of course, there should be no surprise in recognising the value of the ‘vibrational’ value of music elementals (pitch, rhythm, melody, harmony, timbre, dynamic etc), since the whole body-soma operates as a kaleidoscopic melange of vibrational systems big and small. The key thing about engaging music manipulations towards therapeutic gain, is that the options are endless in choice to suit the wide variety of individual presentation.
One could posit this valid practical therapeutic concept as ‘vibrational biodynamics’ or other similar descriptor, but for sure it is something of authentic healthcare worth and should be available to all those living with Parkinson’s disease. Sadly, while music therapy is statutorily recognised in many countries worldwide, it is not formally recognised in Ireland, despite some music therapists currently operating within the healthcare system via tortuous funding arrangements.
A typical Irish construct of contradictory ‘transparency’.
In his letter on April 12, Nick Folley writes that people could “spend a whole life time studying Christianity and not fathom its mysteries”. But these hard-to-fathom “mysteries” and miracles, which he refers to, such as people rising from the dead are, I believe, the most difficult part of Christianity for the scientifically trained minds of non-Christians to understand and fully accept now in the 21st century?
But fortunately the Christian gospels are not solely about scientifically unexplained miracles. They contain many intellectual pearls of coherent wisdom from the mind of the Jesus himself. One of these pearls of wisdom is the tale of the Last Judgement. It can be understood in one way, I believe, as a warning to everyone, but most particularly it is a warning for all religious people not to leave their heads in clouds of mysticism and neglect below them members of the wide family of humanity who might be struggling in one form or another.
They shouldn’t fail to help any struggling people, no matter who they are, who might be spiritually or physically hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, sick or wasting away in any type of prison.
This good-news message which isn’t to be found in only one gospel tale that the family of humanity should care firstly for its weaker members is the type of news, I believe, that all established religions can understand at a very human level. Times change and established religions shouldn’t always be, I believe, focusing on condemning each other’s so-called “false gods”.
It is time, I believe, for them to each consider that they all belong to one caring human race family. Leaders of all different established religions, who have all too often been silent about known threats to world peace, should now talk the talk and walk the walk with one another in order to help save humanity in these time of danger.
But as to how Jesus himself could be the son of an almighty God and also to rise miraculously from the dead is something, I consider, that no non-Christian should be obliged to believe in just right away without his or her first studying the wise words spoken by Jesus long ago.