Letters to the Editor: Survivors of Church of Ireland home dismayed by Synod baptism vote
Wicklow Westbank Dismayed And Co Of Motion Synod Ireland Church Orphanage Are Defeated Residents On Of In At Baptism The Former
The motion, designed to regularise practice throughout Ireland, received a slap in the face from a decisive majority of clergy and over a third of lay delegates.
The defeat reveals hypocrisy and institutional intolerance. Our problem in Westbank was not with baptism. It was more serious, that the Church, through its institutions and clergy, facilitated children’s entry into or presence in an orphanage with no professional staff; where abuse was rife and that frequently obstructed legal adoption; where names were changed and sibling relationships hidden.
As, in effect, professional Protestant orphans, we were transported illegally to sing to church groups in Northern Ireland to raise money.
We were also farm labourers from the age of five, sometimes supervised by children aged 12. Busloads of mainly male visitors arrived regularly from Northern Ireland to touch children inappropriately. Residents were sent to families where abuse occurred.
If the Church of Ireland ignored our plight, so too did the Irish State that denied us redress. We have appealed to Taoiseach Simon Harris, a Greystones native, to right this wrong. The Mother and Baby Home Commission of Inquiry recommended redress for Westbank residents, as received by residents of Letterfrack, Artane, Goldenbridge, and Smyly’s institutions.
We welcome support from Church members who unequivocally support baptism of ‘illegitimate’ children and not institutional abuse or hypocrisy. Elizabeth Chikany O’Toole, Newtownmountkennedy, Wicklow, Sidney Herdman, Portadown, Armagh, Helen McCarthy Flail, Pennsylvania, USA, Steven Wilson, Southampton, England, Andrew Yates, Newtownards, Down, Westbank Orphanage Redress Campaign
I am an 88-year-old former hurler, footballer, referee, and club official and I want to air my comments on the current set-up regarding GAA games and this pay-per-view situation.
We have the president of the GAA, Jarlath Burns, trying to justify this money-making pay-per-view and Sean Kavanagh, Micheál Martin, and others saying it is all wrong.
Take last Saturday, for instance: One of the most eagerly anticipated games of the year, Cork versus Limerick, was out of bounds for hundreds of genuine GAA followers.
The reasons being cost, non-availability of computers, inability to set up on screen for seniors — it’s not as easy or as simple as Mr Burns thinks.
As a Kilkenny Cat, I chose to take in Carlow-Kilkenny, which my son set up for me at a cost of €12.
I would love, as would have thousands more, to also take in the Cork-Limerick game but this would be too costly for an old-age pensioner dishing out another €12.
They talk about spreading our great game of hurling. A showpiece like Cork-Limerick should be free into the Glens of Antrim and the Black Valley in Kerry, and nationwide. What an advertisement for the game that would have been.
Is the call for more money going to lead to the detriment and falling off in support for our Gaelic games?
In my young days I was a sales rep for a well-known company and had to call on a supermarket owner every Monday morning. Knowing that I was involved in the GAA, his greeting was “ah, here comes the Grab-All Association man”.
Was that man a bit of a prophet? Methinks he could well have been, the way things are panning out at the present time.
Jamesie Murphy, Tullogher/Rosbercon GAA Club, Kilkenny
The Cork-Limerick match should have been shown on TG4.
I am an ardent fan of the Cork hurlers all my life and especially Patrick Horgan, who is one of the best players to grace a Cork jersey ever.
What about the elderly fans who do not have access to streaming and computers, or the disabled who could not attend the greatest match ever played in the Rebel County against the All-Ireland champions Limerick?
Let us not deny the millions of fans across the world access to this brilliant Cork team who won against all the odds.
Regarding your coverage of electric vehicles: Modern batteries (post-2019) are much improved and EVs now have battery management to avoid earlier concerns. As far as range is concerned, choose a car that fits your requirements.
One of the most important requirements is to be able to charge at home. If the car chosen has
sufficient range during the winter period to cover your needs then being able to charge at home rakes away the possibility of running out of charge and not being able to find a public charger.
We’ve had our EV since December, purchased as a used vehicle. I agree that new EVs are expensive but two- or three-year-old ones are affordable. We’ve been on holiday with it, and to and from Dublin from Kerry without any issues. It just requires a little thought and planning. We stayed at hotels that have chargers installed — some free, some payable — which makes the trips worry-free.
We have covered over 7,000km since purchasing the car at a cost of just below €250 which in our previous diesel car would have been in excess of €650. It’s not uncommon to find EVs covering over 200,000km and still going strong. It would be very rare for a complete battery to have to be changed rather a small number of cells. And don’t forget most EV batteries come with an eight-year or 150,000km warranty, much better than most, if not all, petrol or diesel cars.
Bad drugs policy is the root cause of most crime and violence. Over the past 50 years, it has caused deep fractures in our communities and it is driving the breakdown of our society.
Demand for drugs comes from within our communities and prohibition creates criminal markets to meet this demand. When we turn the forces of law enforcement against the communities they are supposed to protect, this is where the breakdown starts.
Instead of government abandoning communities to criminal gangs, they should take responsibility and regulate drugs markets. Access would be restricted in accordance with each drug’s potential for harm. The production and supply of drugs would be controlled and taxed in order to finance the system.
This won’t eliminate all harm and crime but it will minimise them. Current policy maximises harm, crime and violence.
In 2020, Conor McCarthy, a professor at Maynooth University and member of Academics for Palestine, co-authored a book, in which he argued for improved academic freedom for Palestinian and pro-Palestinian scholars, and for the freedom for academics to use “uncivil” speech. Mr McCarthy demanded the right of university teachers and researchers to work without “moral or political restraint”.
Yet this is the very right Academics for Palestine and student protesters at UCD and TCD are hypocritically campaigning to remove from Irish universities when they advocate an institutional academic boycott of Israeli universities.
If we truly value academic freedom, it must be a universal concept. Academic freedom for one group must not cancel academic freedom for another.
The Government’s plan to abolish the triple lock (whereby the Irish Defence Forces engages in large-scale military operations only when they are sanctioned by the UN) makes perfect sense for those whose aim is to further integrate Ireland into EU military structures and to provide Irish cannon fodder for a future EU army. But those who shudder at this must urgently raise their voices in defence of the triple lock.
A new report by the Transnational Institute, an anti-war research organisation, says “the EU has been gradually moving towards becoming a de facto military power … with scant oversight from democratic institutions or judicial accountability” (Under the Radar: Twenty years of EU military missions, Transnational Institute, May 2024).
Despite pious claims to the contrary, Transnational Institute, says the EU “is driven by its own interests” that exemplify “colonial logic”. It also says EU missions are “focused on controlling access to crucial raw materials, important trade routes, securing profits for the military-industrial complex, and the EU projecting itself as a ‘hard power’”.
The Government knows full well where we’re headed if it succeeds in disposing of the triple lock. It’s very obviously keen to get down and dirty with the big boys in a militarised and colonialist EU.
But there’s no doubt that a good many citizens of this country — possibly a majority — are resolutely opposed to this. Are we to be ignored?