Experts at Met Éireann just saved a lot of lives
WE SHOULD be very thankful to Met Éireann for their brilliant weather forecasting. They gave ample warning for storm Ophelia and now for the Beast from the East and storm Emma.
I heard some people say that the snow would not be as bad as they were forecasting and that they were only covering their own backside.
I heard people say that it is springtime and that you don’t get that kind of bad weather in the spring.
Met Éireann is very accurate. It is important to heed the weather forecast and to take any necessary precautions. Optimism can get you killed.
Maureen Lowndes, Geashill, Co. Offaly. …IT HAS been good over the past few days, listening to and reading about the sometimes heroic and the many selfsacrificing actions by people and organisations to help their fellow citizens.
It goes to prove that above all we have a deep foundation of basic humanity and care.
There will be negative occurrences as well and people will have witnessed some of those. Like the lone horse in the centre of a field a few miles south of Adamstown I witnessed on Thursday, standing in snow and with no visible food or water.
I doubt that that poor creature will have survived the storm.
And the driver of a Range Rover on Friday lunchtime driving at speed near Raheny while his vehicle sprayed waves of dirty wet snow on pedestrians.
It would be futile to speak to those responsible for those negative situations, they are probably unaware that others live in their world also.
Harry Mulhern, Dublin. …THE snow brought out the best in many, and the worst in a few people.
On Friday afternoon, after the blizzard had passed, I needed to make a short journey on foot with my toddler son strapped in a buggy.
The snow was thick enough on some of the paths that it was impossible to push the buggy, so I needed to step out into the slushy, deserted road. When cars approached, I would move back to the pavement.
This worked fine for most of the route until one driver took umbrage. Even though I moved out of his way when he was 50metres away from me, he chose to hoot at me repeatedly and wave an arm angrily at me as he passed. What a moron.
Alan O’Toole, Dún Laoghaire, Co. Dublin. …‘I GUESS you guys don’t have the resources.’ That’s what the smiling teenager from Detroit told the RTÉ reporter as she stood with her family in an abandoned Dublin Airport.
‘We were hoping to get a bus to Dublin Airport,’ said the bemused Danish couple standing in the heart of an abandoned Dublin.
Kieran Mullooley tried to fill three minutes from a side street in Tullamore.
Poor ould Paschal Sheehy stood alone on Grand Parade in Cork urging us to ‘look behind him’ to reflect on the lack of activity.
Yes days of red alerts and bread alerts and a few inches of snow brought an economy to its knees. As the snow melts, we are now face the national dilemma: what shall we do with all the stale bread? Ger Corrigan, Castletroy, Co. Limerick.
Illiberal Zappone
I WAS amazed to read Minister Katherine Zappone’s comments during the week on the Catholic Church’s World Meeting of Families, which is to be held in Dublin in August.
She says she hopes the event ‘will not be used as a platform for remarks which exclude, isolate or hurt any family’, and adding: ‘The gathering is coming to a country where people want marriage equality, where adoption by LGBTI people is Government policy, and where all families are fully respected. Organisers should reflect on that.’
So in other words, she thinks she has the right to lecture the Church and tell it to change fundamental doctrines, such as that a marriage can only be between a man and a woman, just to satisfy her fashionable liberal agenda.
She has absolutely no right or authority to deliver such a lecture. It’s not the business of a minister to reset doctrines and views of non-state organisations.
It’s a very strange kind of liberalism that demands absolute conformity of views.
Brian Doyle, Cork city.
A nation in ruins
ARE the Syrian rebels any better than the Syrian government?
How can the rebels allow innocent civilians to suffer so horrendously and the whole country to be reduced to rubble? It doesn’t make any sense.
Margaret Walshe, Dublin 15.