Letters to the Editor: No need to prosecute over TV licence
Director Says Is Before Kevin Not Brought Being Rté’s A Reader Bakhurst The Even Courts General About People Happy
RTÉ has got to be funded by the exchequer to end the perpetual and decades-long practice of prosecuting people before the courts.
Given that one in five households are now in default of paying the €160 television licence, it will not be long before a substantial amount of the population has a conviction.
Some of the Apple money should be used to sort out RTÉ’s funding problems, and those who have prosecutions pending should be cancelled.
In addition, those who have been convicted should have the convictions expunged.
The TV licence appears to be pursued more aggressively than the property tax, with 60 a day coming before the District Court who face the cost of the licence and any arrears — which could be many — the court costs, a fine between €1,000 and €2,000, and a conviction that could cause life-long difficulties and consequences.
Public service broadcasting should not be about getting people convicted for what is a very controversial tax for an organisation in disrepute over false accounting, which auditors would not pass.
Reform must happen and not be forgotten about because there is a change of Government.
It does not profit a country to spend its days dragging people before courts to pay media tax.
Even RTÉ’s director general Kevin Bakhurst is not happy about people being brought before the courts.
However, the old out-moded TV licence looks like it is here to stay unless people continue to lobby for reform and not let the issue slide.
Many think not paying it will bring it to an end, but this may be in hope rather than real expectation if they don’t keep pushing politicians for reform.
How depressing to read Anja Murray’s column in which she highlighted the worsening plight of birds ( ‘Will the law save Irish birds, which are so threatened?’, , December 4).
Pointing out that 54 Irish bird species, a quarter of all bird species here, are now red-listed, she rightly noted that Ireland has been “utterly negligent of the needs of the rarest and most threatened of our birds”.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the open season order which incredibly includes red-list birds.
This means hunters are free to blast them out of the sky for fun as they slide closer to extinction.
Among these endangered birds of highest conservation concern are snipes, whose breeding populations are now “in severe decline”, as well as shoveler duck and golden plover.
Shooters enthusiastically gun them down during 153 days of the year (September 1 to January 31).
They are also allowed to target red-listed red grouse throughout September and woodcock between November 1 and the end of January.
One can but fear for the future of our feathered friends when politicians declare a biodiversity emergency and then refuse to stop shooters from blasting the most vulnerable birds to bits.
I welcome the new analysis in a UCC report which highlights the immense risk islanded data centres pose to Ireland’s climate targets ( ‘Data centres to use more electricity than Ireland’s entire industrial sector by 2030’, , December 10).
Islanded data centres, so-called because they bypass constraints in the electricity grid by connecting directly to the natural gas network, are prolonging Ireland’s reliance on fossil fuels.
The alarming rise of islanded data centres was first revealed on the front page of the on September 26, 2022.
Since my initial Freedom of Information request, I have monitored this issue closely through parliamentary questions, and I am glad to see the data I sought reflected in this latest analysis.
As Sean Murray highlighted in his article, the report makes clear policy recommendations, including the need for stricter gas grid connection policies for data centres to ensure alignment with Ireland’s carbon budgets.
Sinn Féin has been calling for urgent action since October 2022 to curb the growth of islanded data centres.
Earlier this year, we tabled amendments to the Gas (Amendment) Bill 2023 to impose a full legislative ban on these data centres connecting to the gas grid.
Minister [Eamon] Ryan, however, refused to support these amendments, instead relying on a weak ministerial letter asking Gas Networks Ireland to refrain from granting new connections.
This measure could be undone with a single letter from his successor.
The UCC report is unequivocal: Without strong interventions, Ireland risks breaching its emissions targets. Islanded data centres are a glaring failure in climate governance, and decisive action is long overdue.
Eoin Hayes of the Social Democrats must do the honourable thing by resigning his Dáil seat and donating to charity the proceeds from his sale of Palantir shares.
That said, a much bigger problem for Palestinians is that the Irish Central Bank continues to facilitate the purchase of Israeli government bonds — war bonds, we might call them.
The IDA continues to entice US arms companies to set up subsidiaries in Ireland, and the Government further supports them with tax relief on “research and development”.
Some of these US firms are supplying ordnance and weapons to Israel to use against Palestinians.
Some of the technology and software developed in Ireland by US subsidiaries is incorporated into these weapons and missiles.
All of the above is not even to mention US military aircraft refuelling at Shannon en route to Israel with weapons and ordnance to be used against Palestinians.
So yes, Eoin Hayes has made some bad decisions — but nowhere near as bad as the decisions made by the Irish State for decades, for which it mostly receive plaudits, rarely condemnation.
There is a terrible tragedy in Irish society in the dying days of 2024 when 3,000 tickets for Christmas food parcels are issued by the Capuchin Day Centre and many who had queued did not receive what they had expected.
That the level of inequality suggested by such queues exists in our society should give the negotiating teams of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael serious pause for thought as they attempt to form the next Government.
There must be a serious, whole of Government, cross-departmental attempt to address this societal issue, otherwise we embed generational poverty even further.
There is much work to be done. I implore both parties to ensure a functioning Government is established sooner rather than later.
I, for one, am glad that Fianna Fáil is set to return to Government with Fine Gael after the general election two weeks ago.
But the glacial and complacent pace with which all of our centrist politicians and parties are going about the business of Government formation is very unedifying.
The country faces serious challenges.
Housing and health must be tackled effectively during the next Dáil term or we will see Sinn Féin and Belfast’s finest running the country in the term after.
The general election was a triumph for sensible, responsible, centrist politics, and turnout is being understated due to the appalling dilapidated state of our electoral register.
But the price of stability is urgent, striving from those fortunate enough to be entrusted with the task of making the people’s lives better.
Many people in this country are facing into a dismal depressing Christmas, and our many good and decent elected politicians would be wise to keep that fact at the centre of their fields of vision.
There is a casual, self-congratulatory “Christmas jumper” ambience to our centrist body politic at present, and that is neither a good look nor a sane trajectory for our great little Republic when we consider the amount of work that remains to be done.
A new air traffic control law could facilitate unlimited night-time flying from Dublin Airport.
As you know, when arriving and departing airports, planes have to follow precise flight paths along specific compass bearings and altitudes.
Arriving planes don’t make a whole lot of noise because they’re almost gliding to their destination.
But departing planes have to rev their engines with the pedal to the metal to get airborne — they’re the real noisy problem.
Therefore, may I suggest a new take-off flight path, defined precisely in the new law, obliging planes to fly fairly low approximately west by northwest from Dublin Airport until they are just east of 53.60524° N, 7.20642° W and, at this point, they must accelerate to their usual altitude?
By doing this, they would only disturb the sleep of a few cattle and horses at a place called Gigginstown.