Gerry Adams and Sinn Féin cannot be serious if they believe silly things like flags, marches, Irish language and the plethora of equally dopey notions of ‘nationality’, are the non issues which endear them to us down here in our bit of land and which compels us to desperately wish to take them to our bosom?
Very few care for or speak Irish here in the Republic and those that do have not the manic notion that this makes them more Irish. Down here we make sure government is conducted under the rule of law and consent, with no room for threats or usurpation of the system if we feel we are not getting everything we want right now, thanks very much.
To think that the stability of Northern Ireland is being held up over the status of the Irish language and that there is not yet the restoration of the assembly owing to this latest red herring is ridiculous. Gerry and cohorts appear to have a list of nonsense trivia ready to kick in when they feel they are in face-saving mode. Last time it was the able Arlene Foster and the heating issue and now it’s the cupla focal which is going to make us all ‘free’.
The few words everyone knows in the circle of Adams are ‘Tiocfaidh ar la’ – and we know what those three represent. Enough of such awful talk, now just get down to serious parliamentary work in everyone’s interest. This is why people vote.
ROBERT SULLIVAN
Bantry, Co Cork
Moribund language should not be an issue to stall progress
Minister for foreign affairs in the Republic, Simon Coveney, has made his first big mistake in relation to Northern Ireland. He is completely out of his jurisdiction and immature in his actions in lobbying for an Irish Language Act in line with Sinn Féin’s demands. ‘Co-guarantorism’ should not be regarded as ‘joint authority’.
There must be no confusion on that score whatsoever, otherwise all hell will open up. His recent faux pas has reignited old grievances to do with the Irish government’s involvement in how Northern Ireland is to be governed. The Irish government has no role to play in legislation in Northern or weighing in on it whatsoever.
The abbreviation ‘MLA’ means ‘Member of the Legislative Assembly’ exclusively. The Irish government is not a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly and it is totally inappropriate to lobby for such legislation. The Irish language is a moribund tongue and should not be an issue to stall progress. The DUP have every right in the world to take umbrage with Simon Coveney.
Sinn Féin’s stance on Irish is controversial for a tongue which is rarely spoken. Language in Northern Ireland has become the new sectarian war. The issues of language in power-sharing talks should be dropped altogether. Language is not going to do anything for anybody if their hips need replacing or they need urgent medical attention. Language is undoubtedly being used for political purposes and a cultural war. The recent involvement by the Irish government on an Irish Language Act also raises doubts about its affinity to Sinn Féin.
There have been many occasions when Sinn Féin has got help from big brother in Dublin and it seems Sinn Féin is not alone in Northern Ireland with the Irish government well plugged into them – if not hand-in-hand at times? The Irish language is a seldom spoken tongue, English is the language of Ireland. The only place in the world where Gaelic is spoken by the majority of people is in the Isle of Lewis in Scotland. It could also be argued that Gaelic is Scottish in origin and not Irish at all. Those who speak it in the Republic usually get paid to, or have special interests to protect, such as language teachers and interpreters.
Sinn Féin is losing its footing in Northern Ireland and it would seem the Irish government is picking up the slack, by carrying Sinn Féin’s load for them. Issues to do with ongoing residual terrorism, health, employment and accountable representation are far more important.
It does not make sense to spend many millions every year across this island in both jurisdictions promoting Irish when the vast majority of people are not using it and have no plans to. Clearly, semantics of language used at St Andrews is now causing trouble with recognition versus promotion causing an impasse.
MAURICE FITZGERALD
Shanbally, Co Cork
Disturbing details behind abortion headline statistics
The recently published annual government report on abortion in England and Wales contains some disturbing details behind the headline statistics. For example, we are told that the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists recommend stopping the unborn child’s heart (‘feticide’) before what it euphemistically calls “the evacuation of the uterus” if the unborn child is 22 weeks or more.
If a child, after being born alive, was injected with poison and died, we would not hesitate to call it infanticide. Most people would probably be appalled if this was proposed to be legalised. How is it different in principle when doctors inject fatal poison into children in the womb before delivery, not for any benefit to the mother who will no longer be pregnant in any case, but for the sole purpose of making sure babies who might otherwise survive outside the womb don’t? However, the NHS calls this feticide and calmly keeps counting up the numbers for annual government reports, year after year.
Should we really accept it as necessary healthcare that over 1,500 potentially viable babies at 22 weeks gestation or more were aborted in England and Wales last year – including over 100 babies at 28 weeks or older? Although criminals being executed by lethal injection of potassium chloride are given anaesthetic first to stop them suffering pain, such consideration is rarely if ever given to innocent unborn children who are also injected with potassium chloride during feticide. Those who perform, recommend or condone such procedures show an utterly callous disregard for human life and dignity.
As a referendum approaches, I hope such inhumane procedures will never be practised under the sanitised guise of so-called healthcare here, where the approach to obstetrics, informed by the Eighth Amendment, has been to seek the best outcome for both mother and unborn child. Let’s keep it that way.
RUTH FOLEY
Clondalkin, Dublin
Mrs May has been well and truly DUPed
It seems to me that Theresa May didn’t have to offer her friends and allies in the DUP any inducements to keep the Conservative and Unionist Party in power other than to point out what would certainly be the alternative government.
I cannot imagine any circumstance under which the DUP would permit or facilitate the accession to power of the Labour Party led by the ideologically pure anti-monarchist Jeremy Corbyn, despite him being one of the last truly honest men left in politics who has held fast to his socialist principles as his party moved right under the careerist Tony Blair.
The campaign to elect Theresa May into office by a landslide vote was rejected by the electorate who took exception to being regarded by much of the British media and big business as political illiterates. Joe Soap public was expected to comply as dictated and vote as ordained by their ‘betters’.
However, it took a ‘confidence and supply’ deal with the DUP for Mrs May to form a government.
Coughs were well and truly softened as Mr Corbyn’s principles and ethics appears to have struck a cord with the British electorate.
It seems Mrs May has been DUPed.
TOM COOPER
Dublin 7
Anti-Irish agenda
I agree with those people calling for a standalone Irish Language Act in Northern Ireland instead of a ‘composite cultural act’ which would aim to dilute the possible benefits any Irish Language Act might bring.
An apparent DUP and others’ concern for all cultures is disingenuous. Although Arlene Foster has said that a Polish Language Act should take precedence, this is not motivated by multilingual or multicultural concerns, but rather by an anti-Irish agenda.
A ‘culture’ act would, to borrow a French phrase, ‘drown the fish in water’ or should that be the alligator?
EUGENE McKENDRY
Ballymena, Co Antrim
