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Understandable ire no
reason to deny jail report

THE anger which prison officers in Mountjoy felt at what they considered the leniency of sentences imposed by Judge Dominic Lynch in the Circuit Criminal Court on two inmates who held prison officers hostage is understandable.
One of the prisoners was sentenced to three years and the other to two years for the 53-hour siege, during which prison officers had blood-filled syringes held to their throats. Their resentment at such short sentences will be exacerbated by the fact that a man who held a security guard hostage was given a nine-year sentence yesterday.
More than 400 prison officers in Mountjoy held an unofficial protest to highlight their anger, while their representative organisation, the Prison Officers Association, met with the Minister for Justice John O'Donoghue yesterday.
The siege in Mountjoy, and the physical threat posed to prison officers, gripped the country at the time and even Judge Lynch referred to the "terror and horror" to which the officers were subjected.
While there will be considerable public sympathy for the reaction of the officers in Mountjoy, the episode also highlights the appalling conditions to which prisoners are subjected. Nobody expects them to have hotel conditions, but the regime outlined by the report of the visiting committee to the prison this week is shocking. Obviously, prison officers are entitled to be concerned about their safety on the job, but improving conditions for prisoners, from what seem to be excessively harsh practices, could possibly help to create a greater atmosphere of tolerance, if not co-operation, between both sides.
The Prison Officers Association may not agree with all the contents of the report by the visiting committee, but it is certainly in their members' interests that exceptionally serious consideration be given to their recommendations.

Many causes for religious decline

IN the 30 years to 1996, vocations to the priesthood and religious life in this country declined by 92%, according to The Furrow magazine.
A contributing factor, claims the author of the article, Fr. Niall Coll, was the media which promoted "hedonistic and no-fault individualistic values."
In the same 30-year period, Ireland has changed utterly and those changes were reflected in, rather than led by, the media, although the proliferation of so many imported television channels has had a bearing on a revaluation of attitudes.
Any retrospective assessment of the decline of the Catholic Church here would also have to consider other influences, which abetted that situation. Economic development brought with it greater educational opportunities, wider career horizons and societal values also changed dramatically. In recent years, the litany of scandals within its own portals did nothing to enhance its reputation.
The Catholic Church for long enjoyed an extremely privileged position in the hearts and minds of the Irish people. What it enjoyed was a status which was largely unassailable, unchallenged and domineering, even in civic areas where it should have had no authority, reinforced by the special position afforded it by the Constitution.
That ended following the Referendum of 1972 which removed the preferential treatment given to the Church up to then. Since then, the phenomenon, even inevitability, of pluralism is something the Church has been trying to come to grips with. 

Partnership is not for peace

I WRITE to strongly disagree with the editorial on the subject of Ireland's participation in Partnership for Peace (The Examiner, Saturday, January 31).
Your criticism of the Green Party's position is based, I believe, on some misassumptions that need to be challenged.
Firstly, neutrality is not about being involved in any type of military activity, it is about the practice of an independent foreign policy. NATO is a military alliance where sovereignty is pooled, and where policy is determined on the foreign policy needs of the largest, strongest nations within this grouping.
Secondly, you presume that the NATO Partnership For Peace is the only mechanism that can be used for improving security co-operation in Europe. This is wrong; the OSCE, the Organisation for Security Co- operation in Europe, is much better positioned to have the scope of its powers improved, but of course this does not suit the interests of the governments which set the NATO agenda — governments who continue to behave disdainfully towards the United Nations.
Thirdly, you seem to think that the absence of war is the same as peace. The Cold War was an appalling period; the colossal expenditure on nuclear weapons diverted expenditure that could have more productively been used towards tackling economic inequalities in the World. The true path to peace is through disarmament, and it is no coincidence that the countries most strongly identified with NATO, are also the world's largest arms suppliers. The background of any existing armed conflict in the World, or in the existence and continuing existence off any tyrannical regime, can be traced to these very same arms suppliers.
The involvement of other neutral countries in the Partnership For Peace initiative illustrates why we need to have a debate, and why a constitutional decision by the people is necessary. In other neutral countries there remains public disquiet at decisions to join that have not been made by them, but by their political representatives.
Finally, you cite the need for an intervention force in conflicts such as the current Kosova tragedy. But experience shows that military powers do not intervene out of humanitarian concerns, but more for economic reasons and often for reasons of political bullying. The ongoing British/US adventures in Iraq prove this point exactly. This is no partnership, and it certainly is not for peace. 

Dan Boyle,
Green Party Councillor,
45, Capwell Avenue,
Turner's Cross,
Cork.

Culprits behind farming crisis

TELL the truth and shame the devil. Who are the devils?
The ranching farmers who got the large quotas and hence the many subsidies. Why did they selfishly take them? Because they had the land and the influence and the hard numbers.
Just look what happened in a massive way with the disadvantaged areas. Who were classified as disadvantaged? Not the small farmers, but mostly the large ranching ones. Why?
1 Because the small farmers couldn't produce the stock to bring in the many subsidies from the EU. Worse, when these subsidies didn't seep down to the small farmers, or the ghetto areas of cities or towns or villages.
2 The cute farmers who got land from small OAPs or small bachelor farmers. Then they extended their herds and got every animal from a year up in calf and lived happily on the subsidies of every kind they got, especially the suckler subsidies. They lived on subsidies. Numbers not quality was produced.
3 The IFA and Farming lobbies in their selfishness are the cause of all the present havoc and the Department of Agriculture, in their greed, are the cause of the present penury for the small farmers.
The banks and Building Societies should be forced to give the money now to help the small man in trouble.
Finally, the greed of the big boys has caught up with them and remember that the mills of God grind slowly but when they do, they grind exceedingly small as at present for the small farmers the ranchers to follow if the dry money dwindles and it will.
Greed has caused the greatest crisis.

Dan O'Donoghue,
Ballyporeen,
Co Tipperary.

The Examiner should
have known better

YOUR story across the top of page one of last Saturday's edition (January 30,1999) "Dunphy Signs for The Examiner and the Sindo shows the red card" could hardly have been more inaccurate.
Tim Vaughan's article said that the Sunday Independent had refused to carry a half-page advertisement for Eamon Dunphy's column and clearly implied that this was due to sour grapes on our part.
If Mr Vaughan had bothered to ring me, he would have discovered that I had no problems with the advertisement and neither, as far as I know, had anyone else in Sunday Independent editorial.
The decision not to run the advertisement was taken by Independent Newspapers Group Advertising Director, Mr Brendan McCabe.
From The Examiner's point of view, it was surely a waste of energy for Mr Vaughan to work himself up into a diatribe attributing petty behaviour to the Sunday Independent which anyone who knows the paper or works for it would recognise as being very wide of the mark.
The Sunday Independent is not in competition with The Examiner. We have enough on our hands with 14 titles in the newsagents every Sunday morning. I would have expected better from The Examiner, a paper I have held in respect for many years, and many of whose journalists and management I have known personally over that time.

Aengus Fanning,
Editor,
Sunday Independent,
90 Middle Abbey Street,
Dublin 1.

TP is wrong on independence

I AM amazed at TP O'Mahony's views in his article commemorating the meeting of the first Dáil 80 years ago — and especially his regurgitation of Michael Kenny's view that we passed from Westminster control 'into control of US multinationals and the European Union' (The Examiner, January 21). This is utter nonsense. We are not under the control of US multinationals and, instead of being under the implied servitude of the European Union, we have more than adequately realised Robert Emmet's dream of Ireland taking its place among the nations of the earth.
There is no better recent example of that than our participation in the European Monetary Union, on our proud road towards a federal Europe — leaving our former masters sulking next door - and helping to obviate the recurrence of another thousand years of evil slaughter on our Continent.
It is puerile to regard the 1916 Proclamation or the 1921 Democratic Programme as if they were writ on stone.
Incidentally, perhaps Mr. O'Mahony would like to re-read Seán T O'Kelly's autobiography regarding the preparation of that Programme (Seán T, Vol 2 pp 61-63).
Yes, earlier governments were conservative, but they were overly influenced by top civil servants, (Irishmen, such as Brennan and McElligott, who were a hangover from the British archconservative regime) and by unenlightened economists (whom people like myself had to suffer in university) and, more especially, under threat from an archconservative and dominant church, which has lost is pervasive control only in recent years.
But that again is democracy in action, warts and all.

Dónall O´ Móráin,
Ascaill Sydney,
An Charraig Dhubh,
Co Bhaile A´tha Cliath.

The cancer of Irish sectarianism

THE news item about a pregnant woman's baby being kicked to death in her womb by a loyalist thug is the most disturbing piece I have read for some time (The Examiner, January 27).
It highlights the fact that a loyalist cease-fire still has not come into being. The continuing loyalist sectarian attacks on nationalist homes and property and this latest obscene incident prompt one to ask how the cancer of loyalist sectarianism in our society can best be tackled.

Michael J Cassidy,
Annaville Park,
Dundrum Road,
Dublin 14.

Haughey debts show up the banks

MY BLOOD pressure is rising as I read today's headlines (The Examiner, January 29).
AIB was owed £1m by Squire Haughey in December 1979 when he became Taoiseach and this was all kept behind closed doors, while at the same time homes were being repossessed by the AIB, when people fell behind with their mortgages.
In my estimation, AIB are beneath contempt — one law for the high and mighty and one for the ordinary electorate. They wrote off a £350,000 debt for Haughey and persecuted honest citizens for a minuscule portion of this amount. Shame on you AIB. The question I now pose is will the unidentified source who gave C.J. Haughey £750,000 be unmasked?
With all the political corruption going on down through the years we have yet to see our politicians going to prison.
The present government were all in the forefront with Haughey, and must have heard the rumours in Leinster House. Not one of them had the courage to speak out apart from the late George Colley R.I.P. who spoke of low standards in high places.

Máire Bean Uí Corcoráin,
Lissadell,
Fountainstown,
Co Cork.

For the common good

WE should rejoin the Commonwealth as it is a model of inclusiveness; all continents, all races and all creeds. It would help us to be better mixers and make contacts, an important skill in global trading. We would be a community in a pluralistic family of communities and the diversity can help us to change and grow. We ought to be proud of the growing linkages rather than nationalistic isolationism. New knowledge is more important than new territory. We can burn brighter if we utilise all the talent available to us and become a meritocracy, a hot-bed of creativity.

Stephen Fallon,
17 Barrington Street,
Limerick.

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