Letters to the Editor: Ireland has an insufficiency of renewable energy
A reader questions whether renewable energy will ever allow us to be energy secure. Picture: PA
I wonder how many of us believe renewable energy will ever allow us to be energy secure, let alone achieve the legally-binding 70% renewable electricity (upped by Minister Eamon Ryan to 80%) by 2030.
The last decade has seen the development of wind and solar generation into affordable technologies that can help significantly reduce emissions from the electricity sector; also flexible advanced small nuclear reactors which can complement and enable higher penetration of variable renewables in future energy systems.
It is likely that a national energy emergency team would include these small reactors in their discussions.
In response to the predictable US veto last week of a UN Security Council resolution calling for full recognition of the state of Palestine, Tánaiste Micheál Martin expressed his disappointment and remarked on social media platform X: “It is past time for Palestine to take its rightful place amongst the nations of the world.”
He is correct, but this is what pro-Palestine campaigners asked of Mr Martin for many years and he repeatedly rejected such a gesture until months after the beginning of the current Gaza catastrophe.
Ireland is projecting itself as a leader on this issue, but in truth it is among the last countries in the world to contemplate formal recognition of Palestinian statehood. It is the “global south” that took the lead and Ireland is a laggard because of dogged resistance to such a move within the EU.
If the Irish Government wishes to be seen to be on the right side of history, then it is meaningful sanctions against Israel that it should focus on. Enacting the Occupied Territories Bill would be a good start.
As the EU appears to be ignoring the call by Ireland and Spain for a review of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, it would be entirely understandable for the Irish Government to take unilateral action on trade and other sanctions.
Palestinian civilians in Gaza need purposeful action and not more talk. After Iran’s retaliatory missile strike on Israel, the EU immediately agreed to bring in additional sanctions against the Iranian regime, but it has yet to sanction Israel in any manner whatsoever for its ongoing
massacre and war crimes in Gaza.
The hypocrisy is breath-taking. In fact, EU states, such as Germany, continue to supply arms to the Israeli military.
The Government needs to break from this shameful behaviour with practical action — sanctions — if it is serious about helping to stop the slaughter in Gaza. Gestures of support for Palestine may be important acts of solidarity, but it is action against Israel that is really needed.
I saw a comic book sketch of a boy kneeling by his bedside saying his evening prayers as his dad walked by the open door of the bedroom. The boy looked up and said ‘Hi Dad, just saying my prayers; do you need anything while I’m here?’. His dad looked like he’d had a long day.
At first it made me laugh; but as I pondered it I realised something. Our design is for complete dependency on God and intimacy with him. We are not meant to figure out life on our own. Prayer is in fact the only way to make life work.
In our day, as the pace of life quickens, the pressure mounts, and demands are placed upon people that our ancestors would never comprehend; perhaps everyone in the modern world could embrace the US Navy Seals saying: “The only easy day was yesterday.”
We are even harassed by our own telephones!
Often at best people try to shoehorn God in on Sunday morning and a quick prayer as they run out of the house. But we need a lot more than that to survive, let alone thrive. Jesus spent whole nights in prayer. Even Jesus needed to. To commune with the Father, the only one who truly knew him (and the only one who knows and understands us).
Prayer is the oxygen for the soul; without it we will shrivel up and die. The human heart is the meeting place for God and man, He is already there; (like in a Zoom breakout room) waiting for us to enter, and share our troubles with Him so He can immediately get to work on them (He loves to be needed).
Once we realise the importance of prayer, we will see the difference it makes. Mother Teresa once said that if she had a lot to accomplish she would pray for an hour first and if she knew she had a great deal to do that day then she would pray for two hours first.
That’s how it works, the economics of the Kingdom of God. And in doing so we also receive peace in our hearts; instead of agitation. Try it and see.
By Jim Roche’s own figures, the mortality rate of Arab prisoners in Israel is three per thousand — ‘All hostages must be treated equally’ Letters, April 22.
Can he reassure us that the mortality rate of nine in Guantanamo Bay points to a maximum of 3,000 prisoners there, further to be divided by the 20 years involved? Any fewer and the mortality rate would be proportionately higher.
Further to his red herring that "all hostages are equal": That is only so ceteris paribus — everything else being equal.
Those taken hostage by Hamas in the October 7 raid were innocent of any hostile behaviour, let alone misbehaviour. They are hostages in the historic Arab dark traditions of the Barbary pirates and the harvest of the steppes.
Those in jail in Israel have either been arrested for hostile actions and been jailed after their day in court or are in detention pending enquiries about their hostile behaviour. They are not random captives abused for political blackmail. Incidentally, before carping over "administrative detention", take a look at the Irish Offences Against the State Act.
I think it is long past time we stopped using the term ‘starter home’.
This term feeds into the idea that we should all be participating in the great competition for shelter, that most essential of resources necessary for human survival.
The culture of viewing housing as a ladder, a game, a competition, has serious and, all too often, deadly consequences, the likes of which the majority of us are experiencing the sharp end of.
I’m not sure who coined the term ‘starter home’ but it certainly was not somebody who was in any way concerned about the lived experience of people trying to secure an actual home for themselves.
The would do well to side with its readers on this matter, not with the interests of the wealthy elite.
Passover is traditionally a time for telling ancestral stories, celebrating liberation, and feasting.
This year, this Passover, we focus on the genocidal violence Israel continues to inflict on Gaza; more than 34,000 killed in nearly 200 days.
A devastation beyond comprehension — entire families wiped out, neighbourhoods, hospitals, universities, mosques, and cultural institutions completely destroyed.
This year we focus on how Israel, by stopping life-saving humanitarian aid getting into Gaza, is using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, which is a war crime.
A war crime aided and abetted by the US, UK, and Western governments who cut off UNRWA funding, the primary agency providing Palestinian relief aid.
The Israeli government is using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in the Gaza Strip.
This Passover, we are wrestling back our Jewish traditions and our Jewish values from a 76-year-old apartheid state and reclaiming our holiday of liberation as part of our collective struggle for freedom and justice for Palestine.
This Passover we take back the false narrative that suggests that Jews need Israel to be safe, that we need Zionism to be Jewish, and that we support the oppression, dispossession, and genocide that the Israeli apartheid state has unleashed on the indigenous Palestinian people.
This Passover, we teach our children to cry out in the loudest terms possible, that this night is different from all other nights because we cannot celebrate, we cannot feast until this genocide stops, until we have a permanent ceasefire, and food, water, and electricity freely available.
Passover is traditionally a time for our children to ask questions of their elders. Today, and in the future, they may ask: “Where were you and what did you do to stop Israel killing and starving Palestinian children, children like me?”
The only answer we can give is to redouble our efforts to dismantle the impunity that allows US, UK, and the West to continue arming Israel, to redouble our efforts to stop this genocide and to dismantle the apartheid apparatus that is a crime against humanity.
As Palestinian poet Mohammed el Kurd has written:
We understand that the oppression and genocide we are now witnessing is not just a threat to Palestinians but to us all.
The exodus we seek this year as Jewish people, in this terrible moment, is an exodus from Zionism.
