Letters to the Editor: Take responsibility for children with special needs — or resign
Michael Moriarty challenges Tánaiste Simon Harris and Taoiseach Micheál Martin to face their responsibilities to children with special needs. Picture: Maxwells/PA
Since I returned to Ireland almost 20 years ago I have, unfortunately, repeatedly listened to parents on talk shows crying while pleading for support/assistance in cases of children with special needs.
Government ministers and spokespersons tell us what they have done and what they will do in the future. Yet these problems seem to continue.
I heard PJ Coogan on Cork’s 96fm mention that he began dealing with such problems 27 years ago.
In my opinion, politicians and senior civil servants have failed to deal satisfactorily with the problems facing many parents of children with special needs.
Parents are understandably frustrated. Some slept out in front of Government Buildings last week.
I suggest our ministers and senior civil servants are well paid, and rightly so — but with good pay comes responsibility.
Politicians are elected to represent the people of Ireland — that includes children/people with special needs. In my opinion, successive governments have failed the people of Ireland in many areas but specifically in the matter of children with special needs.
We have listened far to long to excuses. So to Micheál Martin and Simon Harris I say face your responsibilities to children with special needs — now — or resign.
Two bills that recently passed a preliminary reading in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, are part of a calculated assault by the Israeli government on civil society.
The NGO taxation law slaps an 80% tax on donations from foreign countries, the UN, and many international foundations that support human rights. This will effectively cut off funding for the defence of human rights.
It includes a loophole that allows representatives of the far-right government to offer a tax exemption for donations to favoured groups, while focusing the attack on a handful of organisations. This legislative amendment is pure intimidation, designed to deter organisations and individuals from criticising government actions by threatening harsh retaliation.
The ICC law seeks to criminalise any co-operation with the International Criminal Court. Its sweeping language could be used to criminalise not only active assistance to the court but also the release of any information suggesting that the government or senior Israeli officials are committing war crimes or crimes against humanity.
Under this law, nearly all human rights work — reporting, researching and publishing on serious violations of Palestinians’ human rights — could be punished by at least five years in prison. Israel continues to perpetrate crimes, flouting every law, norm and moral principle. Now, it is seeking to hide its crimes and silence those who document and report them.
Israel already has 65 laws that directly discriminate against Christians and Muslims or that are used to justify discrimination in every level of life against non-Jewish citizens of Israel. These are just two additions that target human rights work.
For the past number of weeks, many commentators have been discussing the proposal which is due before the Department of Housing regarding planning exemptions that are being considered for free-standing, modular or cabin-style homes. I certainly would not be open to relaxing the rules vis-à-vis the construction of these back garden structures as I don’t believe that they will act as a viable solution to our housing crisis .
If one decides to put a temporary structure into a back garden, what rating will it have? I would like to know how this construction will be connected to sewerage. How does one get water? We must remember that in Dublin there isn’t enough water.
Let’s imagine that we have a thousand people in an area who decide to put pods in their back garden and then they discover that there’s no water. It seems to me that this a knee-jerk reaction to a housing crisis that needs to be addressed more substantially than we are doing at the moment.
Many people voted No to both the Nice and Lisbon treaties because of their concerns in relation to the military implications of these treaties.
They changed their vote in the repeat of both referendums following reassurances by politicians, including the Joint Committee on European Affairs who stated that the “so-called ‘triple lock’ is recognised and protected by the Lisbon Treaty”
“The ‘triple lock’ mechanism does not allow Ireland to participate in an EU military mission without a UN mandate and the prior approval of both the Government and Dáil Éireann.”
To remove the triple lock now is to betray the voters in the re-run of these referendums and is a complete betrayal of democracy,
Regarding ‘Slow development of Irish maritime security strategy raises concerns’ (IrishExaminer.com, March 2): Well done to the Irish Examiner for its previous and continuing coverage of this very important issue.
Ireland’s lack of defence, maritime, and aeronautical surveillance has been obvious to me for 30 years.
I spent my life at sea worldwide and came into contact with European and American neighbours who rarely had anything positive to say about neutrality as displayed by Ireland’s definition of it.
We certainly need to get back control of our armed forces, such as we have, from a UN security council and remove the third part of that triple lock. Well done to Mr Martin and Mr Harris in moving on this.
Tánaiste and defence minister Simon Harris is on record saying “We very much see our roles as we general do in this space of peacekeeping, not peace enforcement.”
Once again, as a matter of record, Ireland currently has personnel serving in Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina. These are peace enforcement missions enabled under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter.
While our servicemen and servicewomen in Lebanon work in a peacekeeping role, enabled under Chapter 6 of the Charter, and this has long been the case with Unifil.
Irish troops have served in recent memory in East Timor, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Liberia, Chad, Afghanistan, Congo, and Mali, all peace enforcement missions under The UN, the EU and Nato with appropriate mandates and rules of engagement These deployments are correctly limited by government guidance.
It would not do justice to the ability, readiness, and willingness of serving men and women to artificially constrain their capacity to act in whatever role the Government sees fit.
I read with interest the article by Anja Murray regarding that most elusive and beautiful gamebird, the woodcock ‘Shy — and red-listed — woodcock still on legal hunting list’ (Irish Examiner, February 26).
While most of the points listed are pertinent there are some I would query.
She does not mention one of the prime dangers they face, that is predation by foxes, mink, pine marten, and other predators that take ground-nesting birds. Unfortunately, most hunters will have come across bunches of feathers in the wild that signal the success of the hunt by these predators.
As regards the population density of woodcock, it must be very difficult to get an accurate picture as they are a most elusive bird who reside in the deepest most inhospitable cover . Even with specially trained dogs, a sizeable amount will sit tight and be missed in any count. However, I would venture that a somewhat accurate picture is given by regular long-term hunters who by and large report that year on year the population is overall similar and remains stable.
She states that it is unknown how many woodcock are taken by hunters each year ... and in the next sentence she states that we do know that hunting is the main cause of mortality for the woodcock
If you don’t know how many are taken by hunting, how can you extrapolate this?
I would agree that ecologists and hunting representative organisations must work together for the betterment of all game stocks. I hope that the new Government will facilitate that engagement as it didn’t seem to work well under the previous administration.
