Sir, – President Higgins has described Nato’s call for increased military spending as “appalling” and suggests it encourages a perception of the impotence of diplomacy (“President criticises Nato’s ‘appalling’ call for increased military spending”, News, January 8th). Ukraine tried the President’s road, giving up all its Soviet nuclear arsenal in return for the 1994 Budapest security guarantees from Russia, the US and the UK. Twenty years later, Russia, one of the guarantors, invaded Ukraine, a scenario it could not have considered if Ukraine still had its nuclear weapons. Diplomacy will not limit tyranny except when backed by credible armed force.
Ireland relies for its defence of Nato, though not a member, and it is churlish of the President to describe its policies as appalling; his remarks have been widely condemned internationally. Furthermore, it is craven of the Government not to call him to account for grossly exceeding his constitutional role. – Yours, etc,
DONAL McGRATH,
Greystones,
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Co Wicklow.
A chara, – Regarding the criticism of President Michael D Higgins by the former Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves (“President Higgins’s remarks about Nato criticised by former Estonian president”, News, January 11th), I would be inclined to agree with our Estonian allies.
The President has repeatedly expressed a rather sanctimonious attitude in relation to Nato. We are, geographically, the furthest EU country from Russia and the closest to the United States; all while our defence by Nato member states is all but guaranteed, given our cultural ties to the major western powers. Young and vibrant democracies such as Estonia and its Baltic neighbours enjoy no such luxury. He makes these comments from a position of extreme geopolitical comfort, and appears totally out of touch.
To say that Nato’s calls for increased defence funding are “appalling” also fuels Russian president Vladimir Putin’s narrative that this major European war was caused by the West. A burgeoning European democracy was attacked, unprovoked, and I find it very unusual that Mr Higgins would call it immoral for Ukraine’s Nato neighbours to be protected by bolstered western defences. – Yours, etc,
CONOR MAC DONNCHADHA,
Dublin 7.
Sir, – In the light of Vladimir Putin’s increased aggression toward the West, I find our President’s latest intervention decrying increased Nato defence spending incomprehensible. The surest way to maintain peace is through adequate defence (with no gaping holes).
Would President Putin have invaded Ukraine if they had not surrendered their nuclear arsenal? – Yours, etc,
AILBHE MURRAY,
Cabinteely,
Dublin 18.
Sir, – I’m surely not the only person in this country who looks forward to the end of November of this year. By then the current incumbent of the Áras will be enjoying a comfortable retirement and his internationally embarrassing utterances will be mercifully inaudible. It takes a unique amount of chutzpah to castigate an organisation, to which one contributes nothing, for planning to increase the membership fee of its current participants. Especially when the country he is supposed to represent suffers no apparent embarrassment scrounging a free ride off its neighbours.
I heartily agree with the former president of Estonia when he accuses our President of an appalling lack of self-awareness. – Yours, etc,
PJ MALONEY,
Cloneyheigue,
Co Westmeath.
A chara, – In the same week that the Naval Service could only deploy a single vessel, without a functioning main weapons system, on patrol (News, January 11th), and the same year the Irish Army’s strength fell below 6,000 for the first time in living memory, the President’s characterisation of Nato’s call for increased defence spending as “appalling” rings particularly tone-deaf.
I suppose if the commander-in-chief of the Defence Forces sees no evil, hears no evil and speaks no evil, it must not exist? – Is mise,
SAM QUIRKE,
Le Biot,
France.
Climate crisis and Dublin Airport
Sir, – In his article “Limiting Dublin Airport leaves everyone worse off” (Opinion, January 11th), David McWilliams praises Dublin Airport’s connectivity as a sign of economic resilience. However, the uncomfortable truth is that the vibrancy he describes comes with a heavy cost: our escalating contribution to climate chaos.
Air travel is inherently unequal – around 1 per cent of the world’s population accounts for half of aviation’s emissions and, despite improvements in efficiency, the sector’s increasing emissions are fundamentally incompatible with the urgent reductions required under the Paris Agreement.
In a key judgment last week reversing An Bord Pleanála’s decision refusing a Co Laois wind farm on, among other thing, visual grounds, Mr Justice Richard Humphreys made the climate message clear: “An immediate end to business as usual is a precondition for planetary survival.”
The High Court judge pointed out that the climate crisis “itself threatens landscapes here and globally with vastly more severe disturbance, desertification, sea level rise and so on”.
Raising the airport’s passenger cap, as proposed, is “business as usual”. The environmental assessment of the application to increase the cap uses “scientific uncertainty” to ignore the majority of aviation’s climate impacts-specifically, the non-CO2 emissions that are substantially greater than the CO2 emissions.
Ireland has been celebrated as a climate leader in legal and policy circles, particularly with the Climate Act 2015 requiring all public bodies to perform their functions in a manner consistent with the “national climate objective” and the Supreme Court’s decision in our 2020 challenge which struck down the Government’s National Mitigation Plan.
A country as dynamic and innovative as Ireland must reimagine its connectivity in ways that prioritise sustainability and equity, aligning economic vibrancy with our obligations to the planet.
We urge decision-makers to heed Mr Justice Humphreys’s call for an immediate shift from business as usual and to reconsider the unchecked growth of aviation, a sector flying in the face of planetary survival. – Yours, etc,
TONY LOWES,
Friends of the Irish Environment,
Eyeries,
Co Cork.
Primary curriculum and gender identity
Sir, – I read with interest your article “Misinformation over gender identity in primary school curriculum” (News, January 13th), in which the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) claims that gender identity is absent from the draft curriculum. Yet, as always, the devil is in the details, or in this case, the supplementary materials.
Take the Busy Bodies Guide, promoted in the NCCA’s toolkit for Social, Personal, and Health Education (SPHE) for children as young as eight. This guide confidently informs children, “As well as a biological sex, we all have a gender identity. This is how we think of ourselves as a boy, a girl, neither or both.” Perhaps the NCCA believes that by outsourcing such messages to supplementary resources, the concepts magically vanish from the curriculum itself?
Furthermore, the NCCA’s partnerships with organisations like the Transgender Equality Network Ireland are hardly a secret. These collaborations seem more aligned with promoting specific ideologies than fostering balanced discussions. One wonders if the NCCA has considered the findings of the Cass Review in the UK, which highlighted the dangers of rushing children into gender identity frameworks without robust evidence or caution.
While the draft curriculum may avoid explicitly mentioning gender identity, the endorsed resources speak volumes. Parents have every right to ask why such complex and contested ideas are being introduced to primary-aged children, especially without transparent consultation.
It’s time for the NCCA to stop dodging accountability and engage meaningfully with parents like myself, ensuring that materials are age-appropriate, evidence-based, and reflective of diverse perspectives. – Yours, etc,
SARAH HOLMES,
Newcastle,
Co Wicklow.
Asylum seekers and tourism beds
Sir, – I am puzzled by the Department of Integration’s claim that the 15 per cent reduction in its use of tourist accommodation to accommodate asylum seekers and refugees over the past year marks a “move towards a more sustainable model” (“Sharp drop in number of tourism beds being used for refugees and asylum seekers”, News, January 10th).
According to this department’s own statistics, 3,207 single male asylum seekers are currently “awaiting an offer of accommodation” from this same organisation. An unknown proportion of these men are homeless, but this proportion is probably high. How is this sustainable?
Also surely unsustainable is the fact, revealed in the Dublin Region Homeless Executive’s monthly reports, that “leaving direct provision” is currently the most common reason for homelessness cited by the single adults to whom it provided with emergency accommodation. In November 2024, 23 per cent of new single adult users of emergency accommodation in Dublin were in this category. Although the proportion of families with children who became homeless due to leading direct provision was lower (6 per cent), this was still among the top 10 most common reasons for homelessness cited by these households
In view of the Department of Integration’s clear failure to provide sufficient accommodation for asylum seekers and former asylum seekers who have secured leave to remain in Ireland and the significant contribution that this failure has made to homelessness, how can its plans to reduce use of tourist accommodation for this population be considered sustainable?
These plans may be beneficial from the perspective of the tourist industry. However, they are not sustainable from the perspective of the local authorities and non-governmental organisations who have been left to support homeless current and former asylum seekers or, most importantly, from the perspective of these homeless people themselves. – Yours, etc,
MICHELLE NORRIS,
Professor of Social Policy,
Director,
Geary Institute for Public Policy
University College Dublin,
Belfield,
Dublin 4.
Dundrum apartments
Sir, – Cliff Taylor writes that the recent decision of An Bord Pleanála to refuse a large apartment scheme in Dundrum is evidence of a broken planning system (“Dundrum apartments decision a symptom of broken planning system”, Opinion & Analysis, January 11th). He then goes on to cite similar high-profile examples to further make the point.
What he overlooks, of course, are the thousands of new units which are granted every month, but which rarely make the news. In fact, according to the latest returns from the Dublin Housing Supply Coordination Taskforce, planning permission is currently in place in Dublin alone for a combined total of 82,700 new homes, of which 56,208 (68 per cent) have yet to commence construction on 276 inactive sites. Of these uncommenced units, 50,180 are apartments.
We have many problems with housing supply, but we empirically do not have a planning permission supply problem. The Dundrum decision is simply evidence of the planning system doing precisely what it is designed to do – refusing inappropriate, speculative developments which do not comply with agreed policy. – Yours, etc,
GAVIN DALY,
Dublin 1.
Universal basic income
Sir, – Universal basic income (UBI) presents solutions to poverty, mental and physical health, citizen agency, transitions, empowerment, education, life and work choice, with many more benefits for citizens.
A trial of UBI was promised in the previous government’s programme. Like many other promises, this pledge was reneged upon.
It behoves the new government to introduce UBI in the interest of creating a cohesive, fair and just society sufficiently resilient to face the existing and future threats. – Yours, etc,
HUGH McDERMOTT,
Dromahair,
Co Leitrim.
Social media alternatives
Sir, – You say (“Give me a crash course in Meta’s abolition of fact-checking”, People, January 11th) that there are very few alternatives to Meta’s Facebook, Threads and Instagram.
In fact, there are many.
There are Mastodon, Pleroma and Bluesky, all of which are alternatives to Threads and Twitter. There is Friendica, which is an alternative to Facebook, and PixelFed is an Instagram alternative, just to name a few of the many available options. – Yours, etc,
BEN AVELING,
Dublin 6.
Green agendum
Sir, – The Greens have promised to be a thorny opposition.
Shouldn’t that be Green? Singular? – Yours, etc,
DAVID CURRAN,
Galway.