Letters to the Editor: ‘Joy of connection’ ad sends the wrong safety message

At the swim location, the passenger puts the phone around his neck in a transparent waterproof pouch. He plunges headlong into the choppy, deep, and freezing sea and, on surfacing, resumes the video call with his granddaughter. This bit of showboating requires him to hold the phone in his hand in rough waters while chatting. It leaves him vulnerable to cold shock, hypothermia, or even being swept out to sea.

As a seasoned Christmas Day and year-round sea swimmer myself, I love the atmosphere and the anticipation of the festive dip.

Mobile phones are in abundance recording the build-up and the swim itself. Nevertheless, swimmers need, at all times, to be vigilant and careful in the sea. It’s imperative to abide by the safety guidelines of Water Safety Ireland to get in, get out, and warm up quickly. Leave the video recording to a person on dry land.

Vodafone’s “joy of connection” advert, however festive, should aim to comply with the campaigns for safety on the road and in the sea.

Billy Ryle, Tralee, Co Kerry

Defence spending

Cormac O’Keeffe, writing on December 7, says Ireland remains bottom of the class for defence spending in Europe, highlighting once again the continuing insufficient resources allocated to defence.

Despite government claims regarding a record amount being allocated to defence, upon closer examination the figures don’t stack up.

The defence budget as a percentage of national spending has steadily declined from 1.98% in 2004 to 1.13% in 2025. Ireland’s defence spending relative to GDP dropped from 0.58% in 2004 to 0.25% in 2025, substantially lower than the EU average of 1.3%.

Pensions account for €329m 24.3% of the 2025 defence budget. This allocation constraints resources available for active operations and modernisation.

When pensions are removed from the defence budget and adjusted for inflation, defence spending peaked in 2008.

Capital spending rose from 10.3% of the defence budget in 2004 to 15.9% in 2025, addressing some of the many modernisation needs. However, significant gaps remain, with outdated equipment and technology requiring immediate upgrades.

Between 2021 and 2025 Ireland’s defence budget increased normally by 14.7%, but inflation of 17.8% resulted in a real-term decrease. EU peers increased defence budgets by an average of 31% during the same period. If the next government is serious about improving the State’s ability to defend itself and improve our Defence Forces, it needs to provide the necessary resources.

Conor Hogarty, Blackrock, Co Dublin

Vegan kitchen at Christmas is the ethical choice

As Christmas approaches and the mass killing of billions of farmed animals gets under way, this would be an apt time for meat eaters to consider a conundrum: How is it that we are horrified by the thought of anything bad happening to our companion animals, yet we turn a blind eye to the suffering of the animals that we place at the centre of our festive dinner tables?

Globally, around 650m turkeys are slaughtered each year. The typical turkey for sale in an Irish supermarket, if it’s an import, will have been housed indoors in a barren, windowless shed. 

A mass-commodity product that has a short, miserable, and unnatural life, it has been selectively bred to have a large body and fragile bones, much like the broiler chicken. The majority of Irish-raised turkeys will also have lived out their brief lives indoors, in a shed or a barn, having never seen the light of day before the day of slaughter.

Turkeys are individuals, with their own unique DNA and personalities.

Talk to anyone who has spent time on a farm animal sanctuary and they will attest to the fact that every animal the sanctuary takes in, no matter their physical condition, will before long start to reveal individual personality traits.

All animals are complex, sentient beings, yet we treat them as if they were mere commodities with no rights at all. A vegan kitchen is the obvious ethical and compassionate choice for the Christmas celebrant.

Gerry Boland, Keadue, Co Roscommon

Mandate or not?

In relation to the article from Fergus Finlay regarding what he claims to be the non-mandate of what may be our new government, may I remind Fergus of the following?

The rainbow coalition, to which Fergus was a prominent adviser, consisted of three parties — Fine Gael, Labour, and Democratic Left — with a first-preference percentage vote from the 1995 election of 24.5%, 19.3%, and 2.8%, respectively (figures taken from the Irelandelection.com website).

These add up to a total of 46.6% which, by Fergus Finlay’s own criteria, does not add up to a mandate.

Mr Finlay’s definition of what constitutes a mandate has seemingly changed since 1997.

Noel Coffey, Clonmel, Co Tipperary

One-man band can’t do it all

I admire our independent politicians, especially for standing up for what they believe in.

However, it’s my assertion that a one-man band can’t do it all on their own. I believe that a politician can only do that inside a bigger movement.

On the other hand, when politicians get swallowed up into a machine like Fine Gael, it’s very difficult to influence anything.

I go back to 2009 when George Lee became a Fine Gael TD with the thought that he was going to be the minister for finance.

It was an obvious shock to George’s system when this was not realised, and so out the door he went.

Anybody who goes into politics and thinks that they are going to achieve something in a couple of years is very naive.

It is a hard slog, where one needs to have an abundance of stamina, allied to developing the art of persuasion and the art of the possible.

It’s my contention that this is what politics is all about and this is how you achieve your goals. It’s about consistency and the slog of keeping going. The aftermath of the budget in 2008 was a difficult time between Fianna Fáil and their neophyte partner the Greens.

Green Party leader John Gormley received some sage advice in a text message from then health minister Mary Harney which read: “The worst day in Government is still better than the best day in opposition.”

This statement encompassed, for me, the desire that all politicians should have, and that is to serve in government.

That an old idiom of being the hurler on the ditch can be applied to opposition politics.

This is where a politician is standing opposite the government in the Dáil, often issuing unsolicited and usually unwanted instructions. Change can only be implemented when one is sitting at the Cabinet table.

John O’Brien, Clonmel, Co Tipperary

A naive hope

Now that another despot has been toppled, how reassuring it would be to know that no Irish bank or financial services company, or services with Irish offices — accountants and lawyers too — will facilitate Assad’s efforts to hide the loot taken from the country he and his family pillaged for more than half a century.

Sadly, that may be a naive hope.

Jack Power, Inniscarra, Cork

State agencies failing our children

Reading and listening to the harrowing details of how a small child, Sara Sharif, was tortured before her death, shows how vulnerable our children are and how inadequate the response is from State agencies who failed this little girl in the most egregious way, by not sharing important and much-needed data and much-needed follow-ups, and a willingness to close a file.

It highlights the deep failures in a system whose primary objective was to protect this child.

Then there is the case of young Kyran Durnin, a vulnerable young boy who has been missing since 2022, yet not reported missing until August of his year.

While Garda investigations are ongoing, and questions need to be answered as to the location of Kyran, once again State agencies, especially Tusla, have shown a lack of interdepartmental coordination with other stakeholders.

Comments made by his grandmother during an online interview contradict garda statements surrounding the last time Kyran was seen.

Again, the lack of communication, the abject acceptance of information given, and the lack of a proper follow-up with other agencies, including cross-border, has shown Tusla unable to meet its statutory and moral obligations.

Have we learned nothing from the catastrophic failures in the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services in South Kerry?

But what does it say about us, the public, when a child who is not seen for two years goes missing and another child is allegedly used in his place, or we hear the screams of a child in distress and pain, yet we do not question it or challenge the perpetrators or inform the authorities?

Christy Galligan, Letterkenny, Co Donegal