Sir, – Your front-page picture (Palestinian children face death, July 23rd) is horrific, and it makes me wonder why the Israeli government and its people think that it is acceptable to prevent food aid reaching Gaza.
How can anyone be so heartless? You cannot defend the indefensible. Children are starving. – Yours, etc,
DEE DELANY,
Raheny,
RM Block
Dublin 5.
Sir,- The photograph on the front page (Wednesday 23rd) is beyond shocking – the skeletal limbs of little Muhammad, with a plastic bag for a nappy – and what can we do about it? We must unite in trying to find a solution – individually we are helpless. – Yours, etc,
ROSARY COX,
Mount Merrion,
Dublin.
Sir, – With every passing day more news emerges of the horrors being inflicted on the population of Gaza by the Israeli military; funded, armed and given diplomatic cover by the West. On Wednesday, Sally Hayden (“Without intervention the last reporters in Gaza will die”, Page 1, July 23rd) reported that more than 100 aid organisations warned of “mass starvation” in Gaza.
With every killing of an innocent Palestinian a part of our collective humanity dies, and so does our right to call ourselves civilised people. If we are to rescue what little remains of international law and universal human rights, then our governments must work together to immediately end the suffering with concrete actions against Israel. Failure to do so will represent the greatest moral failing of our lifetimes and will cast a shadow on us all for generations to come. – Yours, etc,
CALLUM SWIFT,
Moycullen,
Galway.
Sir, – The continued conflation of Jewish identity with the actions of the Israeli state has become a dangerous and cynical distortion of the public understanding of the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.
Equating criticism of Israeli policy with anti-Semitism not only stifles legitimate debate but it places Jewish people around the world at risk by implying they are collectively responsible for the conduct of a government and state they may neither belong to nor support. That conflation is itself anti-Semitic. It reduces a diverse and global people into a single political ideology, silencing dissent and enabling prejudice under the guise of collective protection.
Binyamin Netanyahu and the Israeli government, despite presenting themselves as defenders of the Jewish people, have arguably become among the most effective enablers of modern anti-Semitism. Not because they hate Jews, but because they conflate Jewish identity with the actions of a nationalist state engaged in systemic oppression and weaponise that identity to deflect criticism.
The fight against anti-Semitism, as with all forms of racism and sectarianism, must not be hijacked to shield a state from accountability. It must remain rooted in the defence of human dignity and not the preservation of political power. – Yours, etc,
JOHN O’NEILL,
Alexandra Walk,
Dublin 8.
Review of the National Development Plan
Sir, – The big announcement emerged on July 22nd confirming an investment plan to the value of €275 billion to be implemented over the next 10 years. We will find out the details regarding what the National Development Plan (NDP) is to deliver and, of course, it’ll be presented as being for the greater good of this country – as it should be. So, can we assume that the NDP will deliver on all of its promises because lessons have been learned from the many recent and not so recent experiences that have resulted in plans or commitments coming up short or falling by the wayside due to various combinations of mishaps, mistakes, misjudgements, misunderstandings and miscalculations?
Will there be low or no tolerance for delays or cost overruns? It’s positive to note that consideration is being given to strengthening of legislation with a view to being able to fast-track projects of national importance or to be able to exempt the requirement for some environmental impact assessment reports in relation to certain strategically significant brownfield sites. The enormous purse being allocated to this NDP will not translate into the delivery that it promises unless it is matched and robustly supported by the kind of trenchant political will and leadership that, regretfully, we haven’t been seeing for some time. – Yours, etc
TOM TIERNAN,
Shanaway Road,
Ennis.
Sir, – The Government’s renewed commitment to the National Development Plan is welcome, but the core challenge remains delivery.
Time and again, Ireland has struggled to turn plans into reality. A key obstacle is the low threshold for initiating judicial reviews, which frequently delay or derail vital infrastructure projects. While many in politics acknowledge this issue, few appear willing to act. Without reform, we risk further stagnation.
Equally troubling is a broader lack of ambition and accountability within the Civil Service. A culture of risk aversion and process over progress has taken hold, where maintaining the status quo is often prioritised over achieving results.
We must confront these structural and cultural issues directly. A failure to do so will only lead to the repetition of past failures. – Yours, etc.,
MEL MCCARTHY,
Skerries,
Co Dublin.
Galway, city of the traffic
Anyone who lives, or has lived, in Galway will know full well that any idea of light rail for Galway is quite simply a deluded fantasy.
Murt Coleman (Letters, July 23rd) happily ignores the fact that to install light rail would mean Galway coming to a dead stop for however many years it would take to construct the system.
Last year your article “Case for ‘Gluas’ light rail in Galway identified by feasibility study” (Wednesday Oct 30th, 2024) showed a map of the proposed route for this fantasy light railway. This simply mimicked the east-west bus routes. Maybe this is a covert justification for the Galway Outer-Bypass or, as it would come to be known, the Galway Outer Carpark. Yours, etc,
ANTHONY MORAN,
Bundoran,
Co Donegal.
Repealers regret?
Sir, – The 10,852 abortions provided in Ireland in 2024 are not a national shame – they reflect accessible, compassionate healthcare delivered at home.
These are not nameless, faceless women as imagined in Breda O’Brien’s article (Admit it, the reluctant repealers were wrong, Opinion, July 19th). They are our sisters, wives, girlfriends, colleagues and nieces – real people, with real lives and real challenges. They live in the reality that contraception isn’t 100 per cent effective, that life is messy, and that control over one’s body is essential to dignity.
Repeal didn’t introduce abortion – it ended the cruelty of exporting it. Since Repeal, women no longer have to leave the country to access legal, safe, timely care. But we are still failing women every week – those who must travel to the UK because they fall outside the narrow criteria of our legislation. These women, too, deserve care and compassion at home.
When Breda O’Brien raises concerns about coercion into abortion, she forgets the intergenerational trauma of women coerced into endless pregnancies – forced to give birth against their will, trapped in poverty or abuse, shamed by families or hidden away in institutions. That, too, was coercion. That, too, was violence.
The pre-Repeal system didn’t protect women – it punished the poor and marginalised. Women with means could leave. Those without were left with no choice at all.
Abortion will always be complex and deeply personal. But what we’ve built is a system that offers care instead of condemnation – a system grounded not in judgement, but in empathy (ionmhá).
Repeal replaced shame with dignity, silence with support, and risk with safety.
That is not a failure. That is justice – and it was long overdue.
BRIAN KENNEDY,
Nenagh,
Co Tipperary
Planning Nostalgia
Sir, – Unlike Evan Campbell (Letters, 27 July), I welcome The Irish Times devoting 1,800 words to a critique of the 22-storey College Square tower, as the unavoidable presence of such an addition to the skyline deserves a cultural conversation.
Whether one agrees with Frank McDonald (Tower of Darkness, Ticket, July 19th) on issues such as the appropriateness of tall buildings (I would argue density can be achieved without height) or the protection of urban vistas (I would agree the new tower has a catastrophic impact on the historic urban landscape), surely it is appropriate to have a public discussion on topics fundamentally affecting the character of the city.
Dublin has plenty of capacity for tall buildings and density in appropriate locations, but this can be achieved while maintaining the quality of the historic centre. – Yours etc.,
STEPHEN WALL,
Rialto,
Dublin 8.
Sir, – I rather enjoyed your retired correspondent Frank McDonald’s article about the new high-rise building adjacent to Mulligans pub in Dublin, and its impact on views from Trinity College and other parts of Dublin. This brought back a few memories.
In 1984 An Bord Pleanála granted planning permission for a 40-storey tower on a site in Georges Quay in Dublin, proposed by the Irish Life Assurance Company. Dublin City Council (Dublin Corporation as it was then) planners had approved a scheme with a maximum height of 11 stories, but this was appealed by third parties for, among other grounds, being too high! Two different expert planning authorities had reached polar opposite views of what height should be permitted on that site. The late Carmencita Hederman, mayor of Dublin at the time, took legal action, on behalf of Dublin Corporation, against the An Bord Pleanála decision. Rather than wait for years for a court decision, Irish Life reapplied to Dublin Corporation for a 14-storey tower, which was granted this time.
Following further appeals and delays the “tower” (also known jokingly as Canary Dwarf, with its pyramid roofscape) was eventually constructed on the Georges Quay site beside Tara Street station in 2001, 19 years after the first application in 1982. Oh, the vagaries of the Irish planning system. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose! – Yours, etc,
MICHAEL KINSELLA,
Sydney,
Australia.
Demolishing Derrybrien
Sir, – Michael McDowell (Opinion, July 23rd), laments the planned dismantling of the Derrybrien wind farm, portraying it as a needless loss of renewable energy and public money. But his analysis sidesteps the fundamental reason we are in this position: noncompliance with EU environmental law.
The failure to conduct an environmental impact assessment (EIA) before construction began in 2003 is not a minor technicality, but a breach of well-established EU environmental safeguards. These assessments exist to prevent precisely the kind of disaster that occurred at Derrybrien: the destabilisation of peatland, a massive landslide and the destruction of a river ecosystem, including the death of an estimated 50,000 brown trout. Had proper due diligence been carried out, this damage and the ensuing legal and financial consequences might have been avoided entirely. – Yours, etc,
MICHAEL O’MEARA,
Fenor,
Co Waterford.
