Recently, the Department for Communities (DfC) held a series of public consultations to discuss proposed adjustments to procedures for allocating rental properties across the six counties.
During one event, I heard a frail 79-year-old woman speak about how she was terrified to live in her home due to a break-in and the resultant violation of her life and property. The brave individual spoke of how she had approached the Housing Executive (NIHE) in an attempt to be relocated to a safer environment. Although she was obviously distraught and terrified, and though her case was officially documented and she had jumped through all hoops, she was deemed ineligible for much-needed ‘intimidation points’.
It was shocking to hear of how she was treated, yet it will be all too familiar for those who have waited years to be given homes by the state. Those tenants, on the NIHE waiting list, are unable to build lives and futures as they have no idea of where they will end up.
I noted that the tone of the event appeared one of further accommodating the private sector, while no mention was made of how the social housing stock could be increased. Yet only social housing provides secure tenure for tenants and, without such, no solid future for said tenants is possible.
Yet there are means by which this can be remedied.
Currently, there are large numbers of properties, both residential and commercial, that have been repossessed by mortgage lenders. Those banks et al have been bailed out by the people. Therefore, it seems logical that the state should be given first refusal on the purchase of such properties before they are publicly auctioned.
It will be seen that many of the defaulted properties are eventually sold for a fraction of their true value. Additionally, commercial properties could be bought and converted to provide single person accommodation. This would alleviate that particular problem in the short-term. The properties are there. Sadly, there appears to be a lack of either initiative or determination on the part of NIHE and DfC to seriously tackle these problems.
ANTAN O DALA AN RI
Newry, Co Down
DUP’s politics of disrespect has been fully endorsed
Fionnuala O Connor in her column (December 12) highlights a plethora of uncomfortable truths in relation to the DUP. Those whose recalcitrant displays of impoliteness towards others of differing opinion indicates the implicitness of their own anxieties and inadequacies. This is not a new or revealing phenomena but a characteristic that has been imbued and steadfastly entrenched, not only within the DUP but in unionism generally. And now that Gerry Adams has decided to retreat from the scene unionism is struggling to find anyone to direct their bile at. Evidence of this was witnessed when bizarrely after the capitulation of the British prime minister to the DUP the leader of the TUV labelled Theresa May a ‘non-unionist’, the inference being she was pro-republican’ - and Nigel Dodds’s public denunciation of Sylvia Hermon as ‘being in the pocket of the Irish’ over Brexit illustrates even their own are not excused from the indignation – this defeatist language indicates this is all they have.
As Fionnuala points out this is endemic among unionism – when they are challenged, or not, they tend to retreat. This attitude of insulting all around them shows an inherent lack of etiquette and decorum and is a grim reflection of the self-professed paranoia of unionism. There are other considerations which have been ignored or simply overlooked and these are unnerving realities which must be acknowledged. The politics of disrespect and uncouthness practised by the DUP has been fully endorsed by the electorate. They have been given a mandate to behave with the utmost vulgarity toward their opponents.
KEVIN McCANN
Belfast BT1
Respect for preborn child
At the Oireachtas committee on the Eighth Amendment recently Dr Peter Thompson, consultant in Birmingham Women’s and Children’s Hospital, noted that the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said that the evidence for foetal pain is less convincing. But as a referendum approaches, the uncomfortable question remains, much as both you and I would rather not think of it, particularly if it is a personal experience – what if preborn children are capable of pain and are subjected to a painful death by abortion? The eyewitness description of abortion by Abby Johnson, formerly of Planned Parenthood, at the ProLife Campaign’s annual conference in Dublin on December 3, would certainly indicate so.
The RCOG’s guidelines state that “it was apparent that connections from the periphery to the cortex are not intact before 24 weeks of gestation and, as most neuroscientists believe that the cortex is necessary for pain perception, it can be concluded that the fetus cannot experience pain in any sense prior to this gestation”.
An expert neonatologist in the US, Dr. Sunny Anand, has questioned this reasoning, calling it a major flaw as it “ignores clinical data... that ablation or stimulation of the primary somatosensory cortex does not alter pain perception in adults”.
Can we really conclude with certainty that a child before 24 weeks gestation cannot experience pain? What if this conclusion is mistaken? And what about the more than100 babies in England and Wales who died by abortion last year at 28 weeks gestation or older?
RUTH FOLEY
Clondalkin, Dublin
Yeshua’s instructions
WHILE I fully concur with Fr Patrick McCafferty’s concluding points in his last letter (December 13) re every nationality calling upon the Son of God in whom alone is found salvation and the Spirit of Jesus Christ animating us at all times, I did note his point about commemorating Jesus’s death (as opposed to His birth) in the Mass at Christmas and every day of the year (except Good Friday and Holy Saturday). Having lived in Tel-Aviv I noted that their understanding of Yeshua’s instructions to remember His death “as often as ye do this” was not emphasising on how ‘often’ they could do it, as many non-Jewish Christians have done so since then, but rather the emphasis was on the word ‘this’ – celebrating the annual Passover. It was not “do this as often as you like” but “every time you do celebrate Passover”.
I do not see why Good Friday is exempted as that was the actual day upon which the Last [Passover] Supper took place, considering that in the Biblical calendar that Yeshua observed a day begins at the previous sunset, so the Last Supper and the crucifixion took place on one Biblical day. The Gospels do not say it was a Friday, but many non-Jewish Bible scholars have failed to recognise that the Sabbath mentioned whereupon Yeshua had to be taken from the Cross before its onset in order not to break the Mosaic Law was in fact an annual Sabbath, or High Holy Day. It was a rest day like the weekly Sabbath, in this case the Passover, and could fall on any day of the week.
COLIN NEVIN
Bangor, Co Down
