A love-in with EU is worthless to us if there’s a hard Brexit

IRELAND’S love-in with the EU is becoming increasingly ridiculous.

In the past week, we had the Taoiseach amused by Donald Tusk’s ‘special place in hell’ attack on Brexiteers and joking that ‘they’ll give you terrible trouble in the British press’; that ridiculous giant ‘thank you’ card for JeanClaude Juncker from a Dublin woman, which was publicly admired by the Taoiseach; and now Mr Juncker’s weird promise that he will come to Dublin to mark the night that Britain leaves the EU.

Does Leo Varadkar, and indeed all the others cheering the EU and denigrating the UK, realise that all this friendliness is utterly worthless if the UK crashes out with a hard Brexit.

Then, like it or not, we’ll end up with a hard border and all sorts of grave problems, likely including shortages of vital medicines and of some basic foods.

Being great friends with Mr Juncker won’t change any of that.

Worse, the Taoiseach’s sucking up to the EU comes across as a kind of rebuke to the British, an insult, and significantly increases the likelihood of a hard Brexit.

Mr Varadkar and Mr Juncker should be working night and day to reach some kind of compromise with the UK, including if necessary a compromise on the backstop, which is the cause of so much of the present trouble.

Instead, they are standing back smugly, offering nothing.

Ireland is going to suffer every bit as much as the UK if there’s a hard Brexit. We need to do everything in our power to avoid it. ALAN O’TOOLE, Dún Laoghaire, Co. Dublin.

Hi-tech? No thanks

I WAS amazed to read that it can cost close to €1,000 to replace the lights on some models of car (Mail, Monday).

It chimes with my recent experience shopping for a bathroom light, where I was told that one particular environmentally friendly fixture and a bulb that could last for up to a decade… but once it blew, the entire fixture would have to be replaced.

Some supposed technological ‘improvements’ seem to make our lives a whole lot worse. ANGELA RYAN, Bantry, Co. Cork.

Foolish protests

THE protesters who targeted Simon Harris’s house are fools. This is a democracy and you can easily make your point without intimidating a man and his young family. DAVID HEALY, by email.

A failure at Shannon

IT’S reported this week that €90,000 worth of cannabis was seized at Shannon Airport.

While it is great that gardaí and customs officials at Shannon are doing their job, some might suggest cannabis is one of the few peaceful items passing through Shannon airport these days.

At least two planeloads of armed US soldiers passed through Shannon airport on February 11 on their way to and from US war zones in the Middle East, as they do on most days since 2001, all in breach of international laws.

That amounts to over three million armed US soldiers, and thousands of tons of munitions and other war materials on US military aircraft and aircraft on contract to the US military.

However, not one gun, not one round of ammunition, or one gram of explosives has been seized by Shannon Airport customs, and

What do YOU think?

gardaí have not carried out any searches that we know of on any of the many thousands of such military aircraft that have passed through Shannon.

All this might not be so important were it not for the fact that US-led wars in the Middle East have caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions of people. The excuse that gardaí are ‘only obeying orders’ is not good enough. EDWARD HORGAN, Castletroy, Limerick.