Football fans prove they have kept faith in Kenny

WELL done to Stephen Kenny and the FAI for getting his contract sorted out. Now we can look forward to watching attractive football.

It was obvious when Stephen was appointed that many newspaper and TV pundits were not 100% behind the appointment. Even today that has not changed much but, sorry guys, the paying public don’t agree. A record 18,000 season tickets for the

Aviva have been sold to date. Come on Ireland!

J McCourt, Dundalk, Co. Louth.

Exit stage West

I WISH to strongly disagree with the review of The Lonesome West in your paper.

I found the play contained an inordinate amount of bad language, and grossly insulting remarks towards religious people and people of different colour, creed, and sex orientation.

Perhaps, as the review said, the play was trying to reflect lonely country lives but it did so in a most unpleasant way. No credible story at all. Maybe that’s the price of so-called ‘black humour’.

However, I agree that the acting was superb.

Mary Coyle, Dundrum, Dublin 16.

Peace mission veto

THE absurdity of our traditionally vaunted ‘triple lock’ mechanism (a UN Security Council resolution, a formal decision by the Government and approval by a resolution of Dáil Éireann) that underpins the deployment of our soldiers on peacekeeping or peace enforcement missions must be subjected to close scrutiny now that Irish defence policy – including the type of Defence Forces this country can afford – and the politics of our neutrality are, in the extraordinary circumstances of the war in Ukraine, likely to be subjected to a longawaited, honest and comprehensive review.

With Russia having a veto on the UN Security Council it can therefore veto our international peace deployments. Do we want to invest a warmonger in dictating when and where we serve the oppressed people of our world?

Michael Gannon, (colonel, retired) Kilkenny city.

Céad míle fáilte

WE ARE about to receive a lot of displaced Ukrainian people in the near future, so let us make them feel welcome.

Might I suggest that all hotels, bars, cafes, and restaurants have a copy of their menus and price lists translated into the Ukrainian language with a big Céad Míle Fáilte at the top?

John Fair, Castlebar, Co. Mayo.

Focus on the good

AMID the cataclysmic return of war to Europe, I am struck by the dazzlingly sharp contrasts in human behaviour exhibited in the past fortnight: a power-hungry dictator with his generals and advisers gathered around him in a sumptuous government building, planning his next eagerly anticipated move; a comedian-turned politician with his advisers in a city under siege, his own life at severe risk even as his beloved country is pummelled by missiles, bombs, and bullets.

War brings out the very worst and the very best in people. We hear of atrocities, of hospitals being bombed; of heartbreak beyond measure as the invasion takes its mind-boggling toll… but then we see the life-savers; noncombatants who rescue wounded soldiers from the battlefield and drive them away in their own cars to get them medical attention, the volunteers helping to ease the plight of the refuges from this war who, like those of previous conflicts, have been cast adrift from what had been normal lives into a world of fear and uncertainty, cut off from families and friends because a narcissistic politician wants to make an audacious land grab without giving a thought for the human cost of war.

Something else struck me too. I think we in Ireland can learn from the way Ukrainians treat their pets. I was just listening to a woman recount how she prioritised her cat over her laptop. She said she could always get another laptop, but her cat meant the world to her. The presence of all those frightened little cats and dogs gazing bewilderedly from under the arms of so many innocent war victims contrasts starkly with how animals are casually discarded in this country, for the flimsiest of reasons.

I hope the Ukrainians, against all the seeming odds, can prevail in their life and death struggle. I also hope that, maybe, when this living nightmare for that proud and heroic nation is over, war will be consigned forever to the history books.

John Fitzgerald, Callan, Co. Kilkenny.