Irish heroes that State is refusing to recognise
AS YET, neither the President nor a representative of the Government has attended the annual inter-denominational service in Mount Argus Church in Dublin to honour the many Irishmen who served in the Dublin Metropolitan Police or RIC (Garda representatives have attended).
Did those who object to honouring certain fellow Irishmen never read the 1916 Proclamation, which commits to cherishing ALL the children of the nation equally?
Or would they permit us to honour the Royal Navy Petty Officer Tom Crean from Annascaul, north Kerry, the Antarctic explorer, but not his older brother, RIC Sgt Con, slain by fellow Irishmen in west Cork?
Con was typical of his comrades slain in 1916 and again 1919-1921: married, middle-aged Irishmen and career policemen, mostly from very small farms, especially from the western seaboard counties. And 80% of them Catholic.
Con Crean and his comrades did not launch any war, in either 1916 or 1919, but were attacked – Irishmen slain by fellow Irishmen. Easter Week 1916 and the 30-month conflict 1919-21 as well as the 11-month 1922-1923 one, were all civil wars.
President Mary McAleese and the Queen on November 11, 1998, jointly opened the Irish Round Tower at Mesen-Messines in Flanders to honour not merely individuals but the two divisions from the island, 36th Ulster and 16th Irish, who fought there side by side in 1917 against their foe – the foe that had invaded Belgium.
Are those 210,000 Irishmen worthy of honour by our State, but not the nearly 90,000 Irishmen who served in the Dublin Met Police and RIC from 1836 onwards ?
Tom Carew, Ranelagh, Dublin 6.
All in moderation
WHILE agreeing we should be aware of the health risks associated with excessive alcohol consumption, the time-honoured view that everything is okay in moderation still strikes me a reasonable approach.
Stark health alerts will scare a percentage off the booze, but will those be the people who’d never have drank to excess anyway, rather than the heavy imbibers who are unlikely to be deterred by any health warnings?
And if alcohol is to be stigmatised, should we not have similar scary labelling on, say, red meats and processed meats? These have been classified by the World Health Organisation as ‘probable’ causes of cancer.
Imagine buying a few slices of ham and seeing the message: ‘This might kill you’ on the label, accompanied by gory depictions of ill health. Or cooking a Sunday roast whose packaging bore the warning: ‘This might give you bowel cancer.’
Alcohol presents us with a dilemma: It makes us feel good, though it may do us harm. But something is going to kill us in the end anyway. John Fitzgerald, Callan, Co. Kilkenny.
A failed system
THE headline on Ger Colleran’s article in the Irish Mail on Sunday read: ‘Name the official who went after Rebecca.’
This was the case where Rebecca Carter, who had her Leaving Certificate scores wrongly calculated, had to go to the High Court to get her correct scores recognised in time, so that she would qualify for university. The answer to Ger’s question is very simple: everyone in the State Examinations Commission, but they are not the only ones.
This has been high profile all week, so I have to ask the question; why didn’t Education Minister Richard Bruton intervene and more importantly, why didn’t the Taoiseach ask what the hell is going on. She has been badly let down. Castlebar, Co. Mayo.
John Fair, SF does DUP’s work
LIADH Ní RIADA, the Sinn Féin presidential candidate, has indicated that if elected president of Ireland, she will be working and projecting a united Ireland.
Fair enough, that is an aspiration of most parties and people in the South. Whether it is within the scope of the president under our Constitution is for another forum.
The hypocrisy of Sinn Féin in this regard is an immediate issue.
It is a total contradiction that its presidential candidate will work for a united Ireland while the party is digging a border as spectacular as the sink holes of Monaghan.
Sinn Fein is Teresa May’s and the DUP’s best ally at present. By not taking the seats they were elected to fill in Westminster, they are saying to Westminster: ‘We do not care what you do with Northern Ireland.’
Get your act together and fight politically for the North by taking your seats and stopping Brexit.
Otherwise, if the border returns, you will be just as much to blame as the Tories and unionists.
John Colgan,