Opinion

Controlled positive change key to political progress

There are not many advantages of getting older. However one can look back at one's own mistakes, missed opportunities, misplaced trust.

I have seen the decline of Northern Ireland's basic industries due to a considerable extent to an inability to move with the times, to compete with the best producers in the world and an unwillingness to grasp the difficult decisions, while not recognising our own weaknesses.

Northern Ireland is still largely stuck in the old ways of doing and thinking. We still have educational underperformance, health and social underdevelopment, political ineptitude and levels of corruption and judicially imposed secrecy which are the things that a healthy society should reject.

We have two sclerotic big political parties which continue to live in the past and won't risk the changes that are needed.

I hope the next 70 years show more progress that we have seen in the last 70. But to turn that hope into success, we all must waken up to the need for controlled and positive change.

TOM EKIN

Belfast

IBD services lagging behind in the north

I have been living with Ulcerative Colitis, a form of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) since 2017 and I am disappointed that IBD services in Northern Ireland are lagging behind the rest of the UK in supporting the new 2019 IBD Standards.

These new standards could transform the way care is delivered to people with IBD and hospitals in all of the five trusts in Northern Ireland need to sit up and listen. My IBD journey could have started so differently if the GP had the tools to diagnosis me quickly, something the new standards address. My IBD nurse has been a godsend and it’s important that everyone has access to them - the standards could make sure this happens.

I urge those hospitals who have yet to register for the IBD benchmarking tool to do so on the IBD UK website, and for people living with Crohn’s and Colitis to complete the IBD patient survey. Together we can make a big difference in raising the profile of IBD in Northern Ireland.

GRACE EDGE

Lurgan

Perhaps Church is now listening to abuse victims

I have had many letters published in this paper in recent years, all of them criticising the Catholic Church. Having suffered horrendously at the hands of Malachy Finegan in St Colman's College, Newry, I had good cause to. My first hand experience of the Catholic Church was delaying tactics, foot dragging, and walls being built between me and the truth and justice I sought. Instead of looking after their deeply damaged flock I felt they needed to control the agenda, keep silent in relation to the cover up and those prominent in it and then to continue to cause distress and upset with a mosaic tribute to Bishop Francis Brooks in Newry Cathedral and his pictures hanging in the college. This prompted me to ask for a meeting in June with Archbishop Eamon Martin. Speaking only for myself we met just the two of us. I pulled no punches. I said he was meeting with two people today, the adult in front of him and a twelve year old boy. And the thing is, the boy knows a lot, too much, he knows exactly what happened to him, so he’s worth listening to. Eamon Martin listened and when I saw the front of Saturday's Irish News, “Church will remove tribute to paedophile-scandal bishop'', I cried. I had asked him to try and help me get peace and I would be the first to acknowledge what he did. I don’t speak for anyone else but myself and I hope and pray the other victims abused by Malachy Finegan get their justice. An avalanche starts with a drop of snow and an avalanche fell from my shoulders on Saturday morning. Maybe at last the Catholic Church has dropped its hands by its side and said to abuse victims, `We have failed you, can you please tell us what to do.'

GERARD GORMAN

Glassmullin Green must be preserved

In response to the letter re protecting Glassmullin open green, I attended St Genevieve’s Secondary School from 1974-1981. I remember clearly our geography teacher Miss Murphy always reminding us of our duty to protect this green. At the time it was occupied by the British Army. She told us “remember girls, when the army go and they will go - never let them build on the green”. With this in mind I am solidly behind those fighting to preserve Andersonstown’s last remaining open green space.

ROSE HARNETT

Armagh

Archbishop's assertions wrong

At the Kennedy Summer School in New Ross, the Archbishop of Armagh is wrong when he says that Catholic politicians have a particular responsibility to support laws which protect human life "in all its stages from conception until natural death". He also referred to same sex marriages and to education. These issues have been resolved in the Republic and those opposed to the abortion laws have been staging a rearguard action in hospitals and in public in an almost futile attempt to stop the water flowing over the Lucan Weir. People using abortion services make their own choice and no-one should be forced to participate if they opt out on ethical grounds. Religious faith requires the suspension of critical faculties, the blind belief in the highly improbable. The consequences of religious faith as a backdrop to war all over the world are horrendous. On this island, state education and health services must be removed from sectarian control over time because property and education rights are enshrined in legislation.

Because of identity issues, Catholicism north of the border resembles the norm in the Republic in the 1970s. In the Republic and probably in the north, life has moved on especially for younger people.

PROFESSOR BILL TORMEY

Dublin 11