Isolated and ignored, who will speak up for us OAPs?

THROUGH your paper I would like to speak up for us pensioners, or what’s left of us due to the incompetence of this Government’s dealings with Covid.

We have been separated from our families and forced indoors with extra heating and light expenses due to levies on fuel all winter and no increase in pensions, but they are able to give themselves multiple pay rises at will.

It seems us pensioners are a disposable lot as the more that die the more they save on weekly payouts. What better than to open our ports to all and sundry to work in meat plants and as fruit growers, and potentially spread a Covid variant to the most vulnerable on this island.

God help us because this shower won’t.

Anthony Lafford, Glasnevin North, Dublin.

Posturing at podium

YOU must stay at home unless it’s essential, but don’t go any further than 5km otherwise you could be fined, or maybe worse.

If you are travelling into the country, no problem, we will make sure that you are well looked after as long as you spend a few bob here.

Avoid associating with the population who have been in lockdown for the past 12 months; they are very much restricted and beaten into submission, and we don’t want that to change.

This is Ireland vs Covid at the moment, no real plan of action just posturing at the podium for the cameras.

It’s time now to stop all the shenanigans and shut down travel completely until the virus is eliminated otherwise those of us who have been living by the rules will suffer untold damage to our mental well-being.

J O’Connell, Co. Galway.

Silence the ‘experts’

ACCORDING to Department of Justice figures, some 54,000 people arrived in Ireland through Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports between Dec 21, 2020 and Jan 3, 2021. Of these, 52,638 came through Dublin. Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly informed us that 10,500 arrived from abroad through Dublin airport last week.

It’s horrific to imagine how many of those carried some form of Covid 19 with them. It seems it is okay for people to arrive on our shores and airports and go where they like while Irish citizens are fined for straying more than 5km from their homes.

I for one cannot understand why it is taking the Government over nine months to put in place rules and regulations concerning arrivals at airports whether they be foreign or Irish citizens.

We all know that if it suits the Government and it is in their favour then they will bring in emergency legislation overnight. What I have noticed during

recent times is that while our ministers feel they are experts in the department they run they also think they are experts in all other departments for they are always speaking of things that don’t concern them. The one thing our Government must do is consult a dictionary, go to the word STOP, see what it means and then adhere to it.

Seamus Broderick, Cobh, Co. Cork. Gender confusion

I REFER to John Drennan’s article ‘Gender quotas fail to shake up Irish politics’ (MoS, Feb. 21). It states: ‘Currently, 30% of all candidates for the Dáil (but not for the council of state or Seanad) must be female or male within parties.’ My understanding is that, hitherto at least, 100% of candidates are either female or male.

Imelda Byrne, Rathfarnham, Dublin 16.

A true war hero

I WOULD like to congratulate John Bowman on his programme broadcast on Radio One, Sunday morning last. With input from Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty’s grandniece Kathleen O’Flaherty, John and Kathleen described events in the life of their subject, Monsignor O’Flaherty, a Kerryborn priest (1893-1963), who was assigned to the Vatican during the Second World War. There, the monsignor, Delia Murphy and others organised an escape network for Jews, Allied PoWs and civilians.

Monsignor O’Flaherty has been portrayed in film, book and drama. And there have been no less than three books written of his dangerous exploits in Rome.

A one-man show – God Has No Country – features Donal Courtney, a fellow Kerryman, who brings the nobility and bravery of Monsignor O’Flaherty to the stage. Well worth a visit.

Edward Mahon, Clonskeagh, Dublin 14.