Parish pumps and pork barrels: it’s the FG way
YOUR report on the allocation of funding from the Department of Rural and Community Development to a project in Minister Michael Ring’s own constituency in Mayo, despite unease expressed by civil servants (MoS, March 4), appears to be a concoction of pork barrel and parish pump politics.
It may be that Minister Ring was engaging in a spot of patronage to his constituency. However, this State is not to be regarded as a useful instrument to be manipulated in the service of TDs or ministers. Democratic obligations are defined by political and social morality, not by self-serving loyalty to one’s local constituency.
Furthermore, before he became taoiseach, Enda Kenny made a commitment to the Irish people that if Fine Gael was returned to government it would dispense with parish-pump politics, sleaze, cronyism and political nepotism.
Also, Fine Gael has claimed exclusive occupancy of the moral high ground, lecturing lesser mortals about standards in public office. The party should lead by example.
Tom Cooper, Templeogue, Dublin 6w.
Well said, Mary
VERY well done to Mary McAleese on her description of the Catholic Church as ‘an empire of misogyny’.
Such has been the case for a long, long time with females being treated as second-class members of the institution. While the Protestant churches have changed the rules to allow the appointment of female ministers and bishops, their Catholic counterparts stubbornly refuse to move with the times.
It is amazing at a time when the Catholic Church is struggling to retain members of its flock.
Liz Lawless, Navan, Co. Meath.
Limits of law
A CONSTITUTION is a broad set of principles from which laws and rules evolve through legislation or detailed rules. The simplest piece of legislation will have definitions, exclusions, etc. detailed in a way that a constitution cannot.
The Eighth Amendment attempted to protect the rights of the unborn. This led to an attempt to prevent a pregnant woman travelling abroad for an abortion. This led to the 13th and 14th amendments, which enshrined the right to travel and the right, subject to legislation, to information on abortion.
All of the above is enshrined in fewer than 12 lines in our Constitution and as a result we have repeated court cases to interpret the Constitution.
If we take the wording of the Eighth Amendment, ‘The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother...’, we find that the Constitution does not restrict the definition of ‘unborn’ and therefore the unborn calf or foal have the same rights under our Constitution as the baby in the human mother’s womb.
Will the next High Court case be by an animal rights group?
I will vote to remove the Eighth and, if I don’t like the legislation that follows, I’ll vote to remove any politician who voted in a manner I don’t like.
Tom Burke, Clonsilla, Dublin 15.
Spy games
ARE British spies as pure as the driven snow, and Russian ones very naughty? MI6 knows more about the attempt to murder spy Sergei Skripal in Britain than anyone is saying.
It is a rotten game the superpowers play, and those who are jumping up and down in Westminster and their spy school in London are just having a rant. Protecting the lives of individuals is the least concern of the spymasters.
Robert Sullivan, Bantry, Co. Cork.
Against war
WAR propaganda failed to conceal the horrific slaughter of the First World War, so with declining recruits the British government agreed a Military Service Bill to extend conscription to Ireland.
Four days later, on April 20, 1918, a meeting held in the Mansion House Dublin brought together trade unions, Labour and nationalist workers, and the Church, to support a general strike to oppose conscription.
One hundred years on, we now see France and Germany allied, demanding an EU army and a defence fund. We now have an ever-increasing arms race.
The report ‘Defending Our Common European Home’, produced by the four Fine Gael MEPs, does stress that it is not advocating an EU army, and it is all about common defence and security with our partners. But their 10 policy recommendations are radical. These FG MEPs are acting like the four horsemen of the Apocalypse in seeking to destroy Irish neutrality.
Roger Cole, chairperson, Peace and Neutrality Alliance.