The People’s Letters Page

Here is this week’s People’s Letters Page…

Dear Editor,

It comes as no surprise that developer Johnny Ronan wishes to scrap the Bord Pleanála approved plan for Dublin’s Docklands.

He is no stranger to controversy.

Casting aside an agreed plan would however be a slap in the face for communities that have battled developers for years.

The late Justice Niall McCarthy stated that the Development Plan is a contract between the State and its people.
The same is true of Strategic Development Zones.

Scrapping the Strategic Development Zone breaches this contract and would send a message that the views of the public can be ignored.

In a globalised world, it is all the more important that the rights and values of Dockland communities are safeguarded against a laissez-faire approach that maximises profits over local interests.

What is it about developers who constantly repeat the mantra that tall buildings hold the answer to Dublin’s housing crisis?

Do they really believe that selling high-rise apartments for €964,030 to the City Council will solve the challenge of affordability?

Tall buildings may have a place in Dublin, but they are expensive to build and maintain and create dark and windy canyons at street level.

They might attract more highly paid and transient tech workers, but in raising land prices, they exacerbate our housing crisis and price people out of Dublin

Instead, we should focus on providing well-designed high-density housing at affordable prices for those most in need.

Tall shiny expensive buildings mean nothing if they do not provide realistic housing solutions.

Given the choice, I would settle for the down-to-earth affordability of attractive medium-rise cities like Vienna or Helsinki over the high-rise glitz and glamour of Houston or Dubai.

Yours etc.

Ciarán Cuffe MEP
Stoneybatter, Dublin 7

Dear Editor,

Many injustices have become part and parcel of Irish life, these issues currently exasperated by the Covid 19 virus, and the resulting fallout from the related unemployment situation. So many people are generally worried mainly by lack of finances , despite being in employment.

One aspect gaining the attention of the public is the 20 million euro gifted to the Greyhound Racing Ireland Group (GRI).

Merely a gambling and apparently an ‘elite’ rather than an ordinary ‘sport’ this money from taxpayers pockets is firmly ringfenced and protected so that it can continue for the apparent foreseeable future.

16,000 greyhounds are born annually in Ireland and at least 6-10,000 dogs are killed during that period due to being considered wastage by GRI, or by just being slow or injured runners.

1000% more greyhound pups are bred in Ireland that are required for races, greyhound slaughterhouses are a growing business and a shame on any Government that sanctions their existence.

Taking into account the racing industry not being viable at all. 250 million euros since 2001 has been given to GRI. (previously a name change from Bord na gCon to deflect criticism.)

As a Greyhound Rescuer for decades I know the gentleness and faithfulness of greyhounds despite their horrendous treatment.

Sadly I also have witnessed firsthand the broken bones, the butchered ears, to avoid tattoed identification, the drugs given to alter performance and the bald and bleeding skin from cement floors and kennels unfit for habitation.

Greyhounds are still being sent to Asia as breeding machines, a death sentence that most likely ends at the side of the road in the meat markets , the innocent victims of GRI ending their short lives clapped out from breeding, and tortured in pots of boiling water for the meat trade there.

Why do our politicians pander to an organization built on suffering, gambling, legal and illegal drugs and deceit , all for the greed of greyhound racing followers.
Apparently only eight greyhound owners/trainers get the vast proceeds from the winning races.

This country, being so aware of our homeless with not enough beds in existence, hospitals with huge delays in treatment, the grave gambling problems from these elite sports, not to mention so many in sub- standard living accommodation, 20 million could help so many to better lives and some sleeping accommodation in these harsh winter months.

All said my main concern is the suffering of the gentlest dogs ever…their trust and love towards humans and their quietness and intelligence once adopted as a family member.
Greyhounds deserve better, racing, and its associated cruelties towards these beings, is pure evil.

Yours,

Bernie Wright
Shallon,
The Ward, County Dublin.

Dear Editor,

“The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things”

The opening line of a nonsense poem by Louis Carroll of Alice in Wonderland fame.

It came to mind when I saw the images of that unfortunate creature that washed up on the rocks at Valentia Island, so far from his native habitat.

I thought of how the walrus was hunted to near extinction in past centuries for its tusks and bone.

Man’s unthinking rapacity has also impacted on its conservation status via Climate Change.

The greatest threat to its survival now is the depletion of sea ice which it needs as a platform to feed and rest.

But the forlorn walrus off the Kerry coast also reminds me of other man-made threats to wildlife and animals in general.

I think of those repulsive pictures that appear almost daily on Facebook of trophy hunters posing with the carcases of majestic animals they’ve slain, in many cases endangered ones like elephants, tigers, lions, giraffes and gorillas.

They grin at the camera as their butchered victims seem to look at us through those sad, innocent eyes.

I think of bulls tortured to death in Spain by swashbuckling matadors and dogs boiled alive in parts of Asia, of chickens or veal calves confined in tiny spaces on factory farms.

I think too of Ireland’s wildlife heritage, and of the fact that an estimated 85% of habitats deemed to be of international importance have “unfavourable” conservation status and that whole populations of wildlife and the eco-systems have support them have disappeared over the past fifty years.

A third of our bee specie face possible extinction, our rivers are polluted, landowners continue to light illegal gorse fires that decimate huge swathes of already vulnerable habitat, and we still await a government with the guts to end the scandals of hare coursing and fox hunting.

The National Parks and Wildlife Service is committed to protecting wildlife and biodiversity but receives a mere fraction of the State funding allocated to the bloodstock industry.

Gambling on dogs and horses that run around in circles is deemed a greater priority.
The walrus, fair play to him, came a long way before alighting on the rocks at Valentia. But we as a species don’t seem to have come a long way since the days when our ancestors roamed the earth wearing animal skins or nothing at all.

Or maybe the cave men and women had more sense than 21st century “civilisation?”
Louis Carroll, were he composing in 2021, might have something to say about Climate Change, though what we’ve done to our planet is so beyond belief that no nonsense poem could do justice to it.

You just couldn’t make it up!

Thanking you,

Sincerely

John Fitzgerald

Dear Editor,

I refer to your recent article “Poolbeg chimneys may need protecting from ‘structural issues’” and wonder how, at this moment in time, Dublin City Council is concerned with the condition of two obsolete, decaying chimneys.

We have a health service that is in dire straits, a homeless crisis that is steadily getting worse and a vaccine rollout that is slower than a tanker turning in Dublin Bay.
The council could do well with prioritising other more important and pressing issues.
Yours,

Brian Reilly
Smithfield
Dublin 7