The People’s Letters Page

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

Dear Editor
Irish people have a special attraction to sea creatures. There was almost a national day of mourning when Fungi the Dolphin took his leave, and whale watching has become a fashionable marine activity off our coasts.
An exotic addition to the list of must-see mammals around our island has been the basking shark, the world’s second largest fish.. At any given time an estimated 10-20% of the world’s basking sharks can be found in Irish waters, especially in the North East Atlantic. Spotting them has become an obsession with thousands of amateur seafarers.
Unfortunately, this creature is not protected under Irish law, despite the fact that it is now an endangered species. This is a major oversight in our wildlife legislation because it enables unscrupulous hunters to catch them, whether for “sport”, or for their fins, which can fetch up to $57,000 apiece on the black market in China.
The failure of our legislators to safeguard the basking shark from exploitation is a shameful anomaly, on a par with the special exemption in the Wildlife Act that allows hare coursing.
Thankfully, Social Democrat TD Jennifer Whitmore has introduced a Bill to the Dail that, if passed, would offer full protection to this treasured mammal.
I hope TDs of all parties will put political differences aside and give their full backing to this measure. Apart from a striking a blow for marine biodiversity, they’ll be acting in the best interests of our Covid-ravaged tourist industry. We’ll do better economically from keeping the bask sharks alive than by allowing a heartless minority to kill them.
Thanking you,
Sincerely
John Fitzgerald

Dear editor,
The recently retired Tommie Gorman built a magnificent reputation as a great thorough fair and impartial journalist in a scintillating career for RTE news as Northern editor over many years.
There were many august invited guests from many branches of Irish life and particularly dozens from the branch of RTE news and rightly so to honor his retirement in a Zoom virtual party.
One man who was invited and rightly so was Denis O’Brien who also wished to pay homage to a brilliant journalist and friend of his for a very long time. To quote Tommie from the Independent.ie; on April 26th, “I’ve known Denis for many, many years and there were a lot of people at that event who were in the very same category, people who I’ve known over many walks of life over many years.”
However almost immediately the knives came out from some good journalists with some bad information. A letter was sent to Dee Forbes Director General of RTE and Jon Williams M. D of News and Current Affairs from Ms Emma O’Kelly chair of the National Union of journalists (Dublin Branch) stating “staff were angry” “concerned” “at a loss to understand” “why O’Brien spoke” “unanimous concern” “highly inappropriate” “undermined the stations reputation” “perplexed and angry” .. “ public comment” etc. Some others in the media who unwisely and unkindly jumped into the fray were Ms Anne Marie Walsh…Independent…Ms Aine Kenny Irish Times….plus others to date.
One more balanced and linguistically fair journalist Hugh O’Connell from The Journal.ie stated there was some; “disquiet among some staff” so now some questions about the bombastic highfalutin language employed to support a weak case with some strong evidence.
First and most important may I remind those who might have been “angry” and in particular worried that in some nebulous way RTEs “reputation might be undermined” by a friend of his speaking glowingly of Tommie Gorman’s amazing work, of what REAL REPUTATIONAL DAMAGE was to RTE some years ago in a programme called ; Mission to Prey that libeled Father Kevin Reynolds on Prime Time. False allegations were broadcast and those responsible for this catastrophe paid the reputational price. I note that in the letter no names of those sensitive souls who were “at a loss to understand why O’Brien was invited to speak”were mentioned and I wonder out of over four thousand journalists in Ireland and hundreds in the broadcast media how many in actuality were truly offended and on what provable evidence for their agnst.
For the younger excellent generation of journalists are you aware of the following; Denis O’Brien 20 years ago founded FRONT LINE DEFENDERS with a donation of three million to help journalists defending human rights around the world. Also after the horrendous earthquake in Haiti where 250,000 people lost their lives tragically he immediately flew there and spent millions…… helping the survivors and since then has built dozens of schools there.Also in his 30 years employing hundreds of journalists only two that I am aware of expressed any dissatisfaction.
The letter also mentioned Taoiseach Micheal Martin who was “unaware he was speaking on the Zoom event”…So what! It was also mentioned that the Moriarty Tribunal that (incidently 129 members of our parliament “had no confidence in”) found he may have given some money to Michael Lowry.. However what was not mentioned was there are twelve individuals who were unfortunately involved in the discredited Mahon Tribunal who have had findings against them overturned to date because of exculpatory evidence that was buried and disgracefully withheld.
In conclusion I quote Samuel Johnson; “The Irish are a fair people they rarely speak well of each other.”
Yours sincerely
John J. May
17A Tymon Lawn
Old Bawn, Tallaght
Dublin 24

An open letter to Minister of State Frank Feighan

Dear Minister Frank Feighan,
Seeing as you don’t answer emails regarding your brief as Minister of State with responsibility for the National Drugs Strategy, I thought I would, yet again, reach out to you. For a while I just believed you to be very busy. However, I have now come to the realisation that you simply do not care. Like many people I read the article regarding the man who had to appear in court for possessing €4 worth of cannabis.
I wonder if you celebrate that, I wonder if you smile to yourself and pat yourself on the back saying “good job”.
It is now over a year since you became the Minister of State with responsibility for the National Drugs Strategy and in the length of time there has been no change, no progress and to be frank no compassion shown to those who are caught up in addiction, their families or their communities.
Funding for Drug and Alcohol Task Forces have not been increased despite the overall workload increasing and new drug trends emerging.
Despite some meaningless words and grand stand displays in the Dail you, your Government colleagues and advisors have done nothing but perpetuate suffering on communities that are already experiencing social exclusion due to Government policy on substance use. The phrase “war on drugs” gets thrown around a lot but you and your department are waging a war on those in addiction. The fact that there is legislation that has not been acted on with regards to supervised injection centres is beyond disappointing and frustrating. The lives that have been lost to opioid overdose could have been saved with proper intervention however, under the current policy of arrest, charge, imprison, release and repeat the Irish State has been complicit in many deaths. A year into your brief and you have done nothing to inspire those of us working in the area of addiction, you have not given us any signs of hope or indeed confidence that things will get better for our Service Users.
Please engage with us, listen to us and learn from us. We want to see you succeed, we want to see changes for the sake of our clients and our communities. But we need to see that you actually care, that you have interest in your portfolio. That you actually want to make an impact on substance use in Ireland for the better.
To continue down your path will lead to more harm, will lead to more violence, and more drug related deaths. To continue down your current path gives more power to the drug lord’s of Ireland, it will push those caught in addiction further and further into social isolation and increase the harmful stigma attached to substance use.
Start the conversation Minister, establish a new working group, meet with those calling for decriminalisation, listen to the evidence gathered from across the world. Open yourself up to learning from and with us.
Kind Regards
Chris O’Dwyer
Local Area Representative for the Labour Party in Clondalkin-Rathcoole.