Republican News · Thursday 4 September 2003

The trouble with drink

A Chairde,

I was really disturbed by the attitude of Paul O'Connor to drink in his article, 'Drunken Paddies' (21 August). What country is he from, exactly?

While I agreed with his sentiment that Michael McDowell's drink legislation is over the top and doesn't deal with the social problems that lead to alcoholism, I don't agree with his half-baked ideas that this country doesn't have a problem with drink.

Paul makes some reference to middle-aged commentators making up fairytales about our streets being full of vomit and unconscious bodies come the weekend. If he thinks this is a myth, he needs to spend Friday night walking around Dublin city centre.

d our deep affinity to drink doesn't stop with making a show of ourselves in town a few nights a week. Last week, a district judge said that the majority of all domestic violence cases she sees are directly related to drink. In fact, according to Alcoholics Anonymous, drink is the leading reason for family break ups in Ireland.

Paul's statistics to back up his argument that we are almost teetotalers are off the wall. He says that while our drinking only increased by 40% in the last ten years, our average income has increased by 50%, so we're spending less of our money on alcohol. Well, just because you're earning more, doesn't mean you can up your drink intake - especially if it was at its highest to begin with. There's only so much the body can take.

He also says that most European countries on average drink only one litre less than us a year. Unlike us, however, Europeans tend to drink throughout the week, in moderation, and often with dinner. We usually have mash throughout the week and down 35 pints between Friday and Saturday. This isn't healthy drinking.

He then points to the drugs culture in Ireland and says that the government should focus on that. Unfortunately, drink is the common drug of choice and has to receive priority. How many husbands are going home and beating up their wives after spending a night getting stoned, or off their faces on cocaine?

Nobody wants a big brother type Ireland and everybody is laughing at McDowell's inability to see that we need to adopt a mature attitude to drink, not a prohibitive one. But Paul has missed the point - we are a nation reliant on alcohol, and no amount of slagging off those who point it out is going to change that.

Joanne Corcoran
Dublin.

Sceachs and beachs

A Chairde,

Councillor Ann O'Leary, Bantry should be commended for recently highlighting the very serious issue of the council not cutting the dykes of the roads of Co Cork when it seems all other elected local representatives

have gone into hiding . Despite the fact that Cork County Council are collecting §1.5 million a week in car tax, it is a disgrace that they have not yet cut the dykes.

The money is there and the hypocrisy of the council's arguments were highlighted when Denis O'Donovan TD was able to announce §120 million for various other council projects recently. When times were hard local government managed to maintain the dykes of the highways and byways of beautiful west Cork. The briars are nearly shaking hands across the roads all summer, and from a safety point of view for locals and tourists this has been a most dangerous and unsatisfactory situation, not to mention the damage being done to cars with briars and sceach bushes tearing their sides.

It is completely contradictory to have on the one hand so much emphasis on tidy towns competitions while at the same time leaving the roads of the townlands of our countryside fall into disrepair and neglect. The townlands of Ireland are an ancient part of our heritage and they are not going to go away whatever the council planners may wish.

It is indeed sending out a very bad messages of neglect and carelessness in particular to tourists who want to explore the beautifull scenery of this area but who are now putting their lifes in danger to do so especially when they don't have local knowledge of the twists and turns of the roads where visibility has been reduced by up to 100%.in some cases. The same criteria should be applied to our roads as they do when it comes to the testing of the roadworthiness of cars etc, the roads must also be worthy and safe to be driven on.

Donnchadh Ó Seaghdha,
PRO, Sinn Féin
Skibbereen
County Cork

Donegal Emmet exhibition

A Chairde,

I would like to inform your readers of a forthcoming exhibition entitled Shall his Epitaph Be Written?, a multimedia exhibition exploring the Legacy of Robert Emmet at the Screig Gallery, Fintown, Donegal. The exhibition opens on 20 September - the 200th anniversary of Robert Emmet's execution and runs until 20 October.

The exhibition consists of original artworks and political ephemera inspired by the Emmet Rising, including unpublished photographs and prison letters; unbroadcast filmed interviews; political posters, flyers, postcards & pamphlets; first editions of newspapers, journals, stamps, poetry & prose from 1803 to the present. There will also be a live performance of music from the 1803 Rising during the opening.

Final Call for Submissions: To Commemorate the legacy of Robert Emmet the Screig Gallery invites submissions of new artworks which are inspired by Emmet and the 1803 Rising.

The selected art works will be exhibited at the Screig Gallery alongside the archive material.

Closing Date 15 September. Email the Screig Gallery on exhibitions@searc.ie.

See http://www.searc.ie/screig.html.

Patricia Sharkey,
Screig Gallery,
Fintown,
Donegal

Suicide and colonialism

A Chairde,

I have just read your current issue and found the article about suicide in the Six Counties interesting.

The article reminded me of a book some of you may be familiar with by Frantz Fanon called The Wretched of the Earth.

In this book, he covers the topic of mental illness during colonial warfare, which some readers may be interested in if they would like to look further into suicide and mental illness in general or within a colonial setting and the fight for liberation.

Josh Munro
Glasgow
Scotland

Taking Parlon to task on property

A Chairde,

As a member of the Oireachtas All-Party Committee on the Constitution, examining the issues of private property in the context of the 1937 Constitution, I would like to address comments made by Mr Tom Parlon TD at the Parnell Summer School last weekend.

While I must give Mr Parlon credit for learning so quickly at the feet of Charlie McCreevy and Michael McDowell, his attempts to woo his PD colleagues by demonstrating his right wing credentials in advance of a leadership battle with McDowell are as transparent as they are pathetic.

The Constitution Committee must act in the interests of the thousands of Irish people and their children who are deprived of the right to adequate housing, because this government certainly has no intention of doing so. It has abandoned those who find themselves unable to afford current house prices; who are trapped in an unregulated private rented sector; who are on housing waiting lists or are homeless.

A smiling Tom Parlon was recently pictured in the Irish Times wielding an auction hammer during a publicity stunt to promote the sale of state property to the same speculators whose 'rights' he does not hesitate to valiantly defend.

However, if he thinks Parnell and Davitt prosecuted the land war to create a state in which the rights of profiteers would be so inflated as to deprive ordinary people of housing it is time he re-read the history of that period.

Tom Parlon currently defends the rights of speculators to hoard land and sell it at grossly inflated prices as increasing numbers are left homeless. During the Famine, certain landlords exported Irish grain as the people starved to death.

Parlon would, no doubt have defended their right to do so on the basis that they must not be penalised for taking initiative.

The land of Ireland belongs to the people of Ireland and the right of people to housing must take precedence over the profiteering of speculators.

Meanwhile, in typically populist fashion, Fianna Fáil is using the Constitution Committee to mask its own inaction against speculators and developers involved in hoarding land. The mere fact that this crisis has been allowed to get so out of hand illustrates the necessity for clarity in the Constitution to give a more explicit protection to the common good.

Arthur Morgan TD
Sinn Féin spokesperson on housing
Leinster House
Dublin 2

Your money or your lights

A Chairde,

What have London 28/8/03, New York 17/8/03 and San Francisco 20/12/00 got in common? OK, they suffered severe power cuts but that's not all.

Each of these cities privatised their electricity supply, supposedly in the interests of "competition and efficiency". Result: private monopolies, workers fired, prices raised and blackouts. Oh, and more donations to right-wing parties from power companies.

This "your money or your lights" racket should be remembered when the dim bulbs in Leinster House with the privatisation fetish try to sell off our ESB.

Seán Marlow
Dublin 11