Empathy Crisis
Sir, – I am a doctor who has spent more than two decades working in many of the world’s “forgotten” conflicts, including the recent war in Sudan, which Patrick Freyne writes about. I feel his article captures the struggle some of us face when trying to draw attention to these conflicts, as well as the human loss and suffering resulting from them.
Freyne is right about the reasons why this is. The narrative is complex and does not fit the simple, black-and-white, bad-guy-v-good-guy algorithm that the social media apps give us. Poignantly, he also writes that his article will not draw as many reads as one about Room To Improve. But he wrote it anyway, and The Irish Times published it.
Freyne and The Irish Times can rest assured that the article was read, and it has given me at least hope that western empathy can be turned towards these conflicts and that we can read past the clickbait and “doomscrolling”. – Yours, etc,
Dr ENIDA FRIEL
Castleknock
Dublin 15.
The return of Casimir Markievicz
A Chara – Frank McNally is wrong to write that Casimir Markievicz never returned to Ireland after 1913 (Irishman’s diary April 24th). According to Esther Roper, he returned for two brief visits, in spite of being badly wounded in the first World War and facing financial ruin after the Russian Revolution.
When he heard that Constance was dying among what Dorothy Macardle called the poorest of Dublin’s poor, he was at her bedside with his son, and stayed there until the end to her great delight.
Casimir stayed with Roper after the funeral and showed her a bundle of his old love letters that he had found, and remarked “In all the years there was never an unkind word between us”. One of Constance’s last sentences was: “It was so beautiful to have had all this love and kindness before I go.” – Beir Beannacht,
PEADAR MAC MÁGHNAIS
Bhinn Éadair,
Baile Átha Cliath.
Mental health services
Sir, – The group of general practitioners representing Deep End Ireland correctly identify underinvestment in primary mental health services as one of several major problems in the sector (Letters, April 16th).
Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (Camhs) was established to treat young people with moderate to severe mental illness, and in theory should cater for approximately 2 per cent of the population.
The majority of mental health issues arising for our children and young people could and should be treated comfortably in primary care. However, perennial underinvestment and under-resourcing means many children are instead sent to Camhs. This forces it to become a catch-all service for all mental health issues in young people, despite itself being beset by resourcing and governance problems. The inevitable result is a shocking and unacceptable delay in treatment for very ill young people who need it as a matter of urgency.
In 2024, more than 18,500 children and young people were on waiting lists for primary care psychology, with more than 7,500 of these waiting more than a year for an appointment.
Last month the College of Psychiatrists of Ireland published a detailed paper proposing major changes to Camhs. It highlighted the essential need for the development of primary care and school-based services. It is vital that this be carried out with cohesion in mind. Formal, meaningful links across services must be fostered. This would help to ease lengthy waiting lists, improve access to timely intervention and high-quality care for young people and families, and minimise referral issues to all services.
There is no doubt that mental health services in Ireland are under severe strain. The sector urgently needs proper resourcing, funding and governance to offer patients the standard of care they deserve. The Government must begin its work with haste. – Yours, etc,
Dr JOANNE FEGAN, director of communications and policy,
Dr PATRICIA BYRNE, chair of faculty of child and adolescent psychiatry,
College of Psychiatrists of Ireland.
Shingles
Sir, – I wholeheartedly agree with Kathleen Fagan (Shingles vaccination, Letters, April 24th). A senior citizen, I had shingles in October 2024. Six months later I am still suffering from postherpetic neuralgia in my upper arm, a most distressing and unpleasant condition. I suspect that the cost of vaccination would be less than the cost of medications, consultant visits and treatments (with no significant results) to date. This is a condition that I would not wish on my worst, or indeed any, enemy! – Yours, etc,
FERGUS MALONE
Dublin 16.
E-bikes and the law
Sir, – Michael Callan (E-bikes and the law, Letters, April 24th) attempted to clarify the confusion around e-bikes and the law in Ireland. Regrettably, his letter failed to clarify where these e-bikes may be used and did not refer to escooters. I understand that e-bikes and escooters may not be used on footpaths except when entering or leaving a premises. I also understand from recent adverts on radio that there are several other criteria with regard to the minimum age, the maximum speeds and the carriage of goods and the carriage of passengers and, of course, obeying the rules of the road. The letter merely clarified whether an e-bike was a MPV – mechanically propelled vehicle – as defined in the Irish statute books. This legislation, such as it is, was introduced when these e-bikes and escooters were already ubiquitous following years without any relevant legislation and there is still no means of tracing an e-bike or escooter if you need to do so following an accident. – Yours, etc,
CHARLIE O’SULLIVAN
Cork.
Sceirde Rocks wind farm
Sir, – As of last week, Corio Generation has withdrawn from the €1.4 billion Sceirde Rocks project – despite submitting a planning application and securing a State-backed energy contract. The reason? On paper, severe seabed instability, unpredictable undersea currents and the not-so-minor matter of 23-metre waves recorded during Storm Éowyn, a tempest of such biblical temperament it seemed less a weather event than an act of aesthetic defence.
The storm produced the highest surges ever recorded along Ireland’s western seaboard – 2.6m above normal tides at Galway Port – accompanied by hurricane-force winds of 184km/h at Mace Head in Connemara. No wonder the site was deemed too volatile to proceed.
The project would have offset 550,000 tonnes of CO₂ annually – about 1 per cent of Ireland’s total emissions. Globally, it wouldn’t register a flicker: roughly 0.001 per cent of the world’s annual output. And yet we nearly sacrificed one of Europe’s most iconic seascapes to gain what amounts to a rounding error on a planetary scale.
There are better ways. Floating wind platforms – deployable far offshore and out of sight – are expected to reach cost parity within a decade. But instead of planning for what’s next, we nearly locked ourselves into yesterday’s solution – fixed wind – for 30 years. Let turbines rise far offshore. Let data centres carry their burden. Let policy reflect proportionality, not PR. And let Connemara remain what it has always been: an uncluttered meeting of sky, sea and stone. – Yours. etc,
NOEL MANNION
Montreal,
Canada.
Pearse House
Sir, – Olivia Kelly’s recent article (“Regeneration of Dublin City Flat Complexes At Risk”, Front page, April 23rd) highlights the growing disconnect in public housing policy between the need for dignified, healthy living conditions and a narrow focus on numbers of housing units.
Pearse House and other sites now slated for regeneration exist in what the Pobal HP Deprivation Index classifies as “extremely deprived” or “deprived” small areas. Essentially, these are already among the most disadvantaged communities in the country, with long-standing deficits in infrastructure, opportunity and health outcomes. While increasing housing supply is vital, regeneration of historic flat complexes must be evaluated within a broader social, economic and public health context.
Many of these complexes are also located in the most densely populated parts of our island. The amalgamation of substandard units into fewer, healthier homes within this context should not be viewed as a loss of capacity, but as a necessary correction to decades of inadequate housing policy. Dublin City Council should actively share density and typology reports required by the Department of Housing Local Government and Heritage (DHLGH) with consultative regeneration forums to create a general fluency around how funding decisions are made and allow for a more robust and broad based interrogation of unsatisfactory DHLGH decisions such as the one recently applied to the Pearse House regeneration scheme.
Hidden among the European Committee of Social Rights ruling (FIDH v Ireland, Complaint No 110/2014) that Ireland had violated Article 16 of the Revised European Social Charter cited in the article is the point that Ireland had “failed to collect complete statistics on the condition of local authority housing for 15 years”.
This is important. A lack of meaningful data on housing quality and the impact that inadequate quality has on tenant outcomes allows duty-bearing agencies and policymakers to consistently move the conversation away from the violation of tenant rights to a sterile narrative around unit numbers.
Using incomplete statistic sets to make evidence-based funding decisions is not a sound strategy. This becomes unjust when decisions place already “deprived” and “extremely deprived” communities at a further disadvantage. A “computer says no” approach to funding more complex housing regeneration projects – one that discounts complex human needs against additionality metrics – will only perpetuate the housing crisis it seeks to address. – Yours, etc,
AUSTIN CAMPBELL
CEO,
The Liberties Community Project,
Dublin 8.
Sir, – Reading your article on Pearse House, it brought back many happy memories of times spent in my grandmother’s flat in the 1970s/80s.
My grandparents moved into Pearse House when the flats were built. They originally lived in a one-bedroom flat but moved to a corner two-bedroom next door as their family increased in size to six children. My mother and her sisters all slept in one bed. They were hard times back then but mam has wonderful memories of growing up in Pearse House.
We loved visiting granny. We played chasing on the balconies and went to the adjoining playground. It was an absolute children’s paradise with a monkey puzzle, witch’s hat, swing boat, sand pits and so much more. My own parents lived in Coolock, a newly-built suburb back then and akin to living in the countryside. There were no such facilities in “the sticks”!
Pearse House should be regenerated to allow people live in a decent, habitable environment with at least a modicum of space for their families. Our country is awash with money and it is incumbent on our Government to spend it on worthy regeneration projects in order to preserve the heritage of our city, which has served so many families so well, going back generations. – Yours, etc,
DEE DELANY
Raheny,
Dublin 5.
Cyclists against cycle lanes
Sir, – The proposed BusConnects corridors amount to an assault on the environment, as exemplified by the Shankhill section of the Bray corridor. A traditional landscape of mature trees is being gutted to build a dystopian corridor.
As someone who has cycled to work for more than 40 years, I personally loath developed cycle lanes – they are devoid of trees, and present cyclists with boring, windy lanes that make cycling a pain. Cyclists need the cover of trees and the character of a meandering landscape to make cycling commutes doable on a daily basis – no cyclist wants to be looking straight ahead to kilometres of brown cycle lane and nothing else.
KEVIN NOLAN
Rathfarnham,
Dublin 16.
Teachers and religious certs
Sir, – I read with interest the article by Carl O’Brien ( “Ireland among ‘outliers’ in requiring religious certs to teach”, April 24th) on the Irish National Teachers Organisation motions about teaching religion in Irish primary schools.
If I hadn’t actually been at the congress , I would have believed that 90 per cent of the delegates were frothing at the bit to eradicate religion from schools forthwith. The actual debate was much more nuanced and diverse.
Incidentally, the reference to Saudi Arabia as one of the few other countries that require religious certs was amusing in the extreme because, as one delegate pointed out, that’s exactly where most of our newly qualified teachers go – Saudi Arabia. Go figure! – Yours, etc,
AILEEN HOOPER
Stoneybatter,
Dublin 7.
