THE PEOPLE’S LETTERS PAGE

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

Dear Editor,

The powers that be with too much of our money to spend put expensive stainless steel cigarette butt boxes on most all the traffic light poles in Swords which no one used and many had the bottom of them hanging open due to faulty locks so letting the butt’s fall out.

Now where are they?

Lying in some storage room most likely where the lights are left on 24 hours for security no doubt.

The so-called Cultural Quarter of the Medieval Castle is marred by stainless steel ramparts costing one million euros.

You couldn’t make it up.

Why?

Now no films can be made there for one thing and who wants to take pics of a castle with such ugly steel walkways.

Health and safety gone mad.

The perimeter of the newly renovated and strengthened walls on North Road are fenced with 9-foot-high ugly cage wire and huge concrete blocks. Why?

If walls were repaired what is the reason for to have a fence at 30\40 metres out from it?

Maybe they think someone will come and steal the stones.

Some cultural quarter, it’s more like the Berlin Wall.

All it’s short of is barbed wire on top to complete it.

Where is common sense gone to. It has fled from these council members for certain.

Why not put medieval style tents for kids to play in or have some old style market stalls?

Inside the grounds one cabin has been built.

Why?

It costs money to heat and man.

There is nothing that cannot be seen by a short walk and a little display unit would suffice.

There is no need for it to be staffed.

And so is spent our hard-earned income by taxes on the most useless items and burning up the planet with lights and probably heating left on all night long.

Why not put up some much-needed public toilets?

None exist in this village.

Why not replant the castles orchard and maybe hide the ugly walkway with their foliage or at least paint the thing brown or maybe cover it with wood from outside?

Time to wake up and turn off the lights.

Enough is enough

Yours sincerely,

JJ Hadenough, Swords

Dear Editor.

As a campaigner for wildlife protection, I wish the Citizen’s Assembly on Biodiversity Loss well as it grapples with the multiple threats to Ireland’s flora and fauna.

In particular, I hope that the plight of our persecuted Irish Hare will feature in the Assembly’s deliberations.

This magnificent creature is one of our few truly native mammals, a survivor of the last Ice Age of 10,000 years ago that may have been around for 60,000 years or more before that. It is a sub-species of the Mountain Hare that is unique to Ireland.

Lauded in song and folklore, it has been in decline for the past half century, mainly due to habitat loss arising from urbanisation and the downside of modern agriculture. Mono-culture strips away swathes of its food resource and the cover it depends on to evade predators.

Given the obvious threats to its survival, I find it shocking and incomprehensible that the government still permits coursing clubs to capture thousands of hares each year for the purpose of setting dogs on them.

This mammal that conservationists have dubbed the “flagship of Irish biodiversity” is at the mercy of people who get their kicks from watching it run from hyped –up greyhounds. Some hares get mauled or tossed into the air like rag dolls, others die post-coursing of stress-related ailments.

Even the arrival in Ireland of the RHD2 virus that is fatal to hares and rabbits and can be spread by coursing activities didn’t faze the politicians who back this barbarism. A temporary suspension on coursing was lifted following a ferocious backbench rebellion by Fine Gael and Fianna Fail TDs.

If the government really wishes to address our biodiversity crisis, should it not be concerned about the signal it’s sending out by allowing the very symbol of our wonderful wildlife heritage to be used as LIVE BAIT in coursing?

This isn’t some harmless pastime like tennis or swimming, but a practice that is criminalized elsewhere in Europe, carrying hefty fines and prison terms. It has been banned in Northern Ireland since 2011.

I suggest that the Citizen’s Assembly on Biodiversity Loss place the need for a coursing ban at the top of its agenda.

Thanking you,

John Fitzgerald

Dear Editor,

Many times, during the pandemic we would hear commentators/journalists/columnists make the point that one positive effect of the enforced shutdown of society was that it would do wonders for humanity.

Many believed that the human race would become more caring, more loving and tolerant of each other due to our shared experience of living through a pandemic.

At the outset we heard heart-warming stories of extreme acts of kindness and reinvigorated community spirit in towns and villages up and down the country.

Fast forward to today and it appears to me that our society has become less caring, less loving and more intolerant of each other.

In my own hometown in north Dublin we now have to deal with marauding gangs of teenage boys every night fighting, breaking bottles or annoying people going about their business.

On the roads many motorists seem very aggressive and impatient with other drivers.

In general, I think people seem to be on edge more, as if the pandemic has left some residual trauma that hasn’t been dealt with.

Let’s all try to be kind to each other.

I know it’s a cliché, but you just never know what someone else is going through, so be kind.

If in doubt don’t give out!

Yours sincerely,

John Carroll,

Dublin 13