EDITOR – Marymount Hospice is calling on the public’s support of two very different fundraising campaigns this month.
In its second year of its fundraising campaigns and events being impacted by Covid-19, Marymount has been mindful not to put pressure on the public for support at this turbulent time. We are very aware that this is a very difficult time for people at the moment with financial and health uncertainty. We have limited our appeals to very specific campaigns. Our gardening appeal is one we recently launched and one we hope people might support in a small way if at all possible. We hope to open up our garden spaces to facilitate more visiting for families as soon as we can while following all government guidelines. As we are unable to have volunteer groups onsite at present our gardens need some work to get us to a point of being able to adequately facilitate safe family visiting.’
The other Marymount Rebel Way appeal is targeting the more active among us and Marymount is inviting people to virtually walk the Beara Way for Marymount and complete 100km in April and May. While you can walk locally you can track your distance on your online fundraising pages and receive emails as you pass through the stunning West Cork hotspots from Glengarriff to Dursey Island. Register at
Marymount.ie.
The impact of Covid-19 on fundraising has certainly been felt by Marymount who again have had to cancel all regular fundraising events and campaigns in 2021 including the ongoing closure of the Friends of Marymount shop in Cork City. Even with the closures and cancellations the facility relies on fundraising to raise €3.5m each year to sustain the current level of Marymount services. As always the people of Cork are great at rallying us and supporting us in creative ways.While we are feeling the pinch this year we are also very appreciative of people’s support of us at this difficult time.
Paula McGovern,
Head of Fundraising and
Communications,
Marymount Hospice.
Ulster Unionism is at a crossroads
EDITOR – The DUP is trying to fly with clipped wings, the UUP is trying to run and they can’t even walk, the TUV are stuck in a time warp and are going nowhere, and that’s the political side of unionism, without leadership.
When democracy is working as it should be, to unionists/loyalists’ mindset that means it’s not working in their favour. They resort back to stoking up tensions by way of orchestrated violence, carried out by children/teenagers at the behest of paramilitary godfathers who stay in the shadows. Paramilitary outfits such as the UVF and UDA haven’t gone away y’know but there are turf wars going on over who controls the drug profits in areas such as Mount Vernon, and Tigers Bay area in north Belfast.
Unfortunately, the DUP leader Arlene Foster still wouldn’t see past the end of her nose after a visit to Specsavers, that is the long and short of it. They can use all the worn-out excuses they wish to keep regurgitating, but its not going to change the new reality of 2021 where changing demographics should be the tonic that would educate Unionists to the fact the old days of dominance over their nationalists/republican’s neighbours is at an end.
Arlene, Gregory or Jeffery can no longer be pandered too especially when they start issuing subtle threats of violence because the protocol is not going away, neither is the border in the Irish sea and the call for a border poll is well and truly justified as an integral part of the good Friday agreement, Unionists like the cosseted Jeffery Donaldson can make claims that they are being marginalised and their concerns not listened to, but they should take heed to the fact that nationalists/republicans were trapped in an unwelcoming statelet born out of the most undemocratic pencil line ever drawn on a map, discrimination for them, was an everyday occurrence, and that reality cannot be swept under the carpet. In a united Ireland unionist would have access to the exact same rights as anyone else and that includes people of African, Indian, Brazilian or English descent that live in Ulster, Munster, Connacht, or Leinster.
James Woods,
Gort an Choirce,
Dún na nGall.
Lost in a mental mist
EDITOR – With the logging of yet another gun tragedy in America the issue of firearm ownership is raised once again to the background noise of body bags been zipped.
Is firearm ownership a sign of arrested development in a person’s character? Needing the weight and power of a firearm to show society that they exist and that with one squeeze they can administer lethal justice.
Mixing firearm ownership with a fractured mental state of mind is a recipe for unleashing hurt, pain, and death. To be in a state of mental disharmony and with legal access to a firearm is a slow motion walk to a graveyard.
There is much currency to the view that those involved in recreational live shooting have mental compassion infertility, in respect of having an urge to inflict death on a non-human creature.
When animal killers leave the hunting field to carry out their destructive urges within the domestic or social setting the havoc unleashed via the barrel of a firearm makes all the days practising on non-human targets worthwhile and allows the shooter to mentally shutdown.
The sense of power the occasion brings is intoxicating to the shooter. Lost in a mental mist while mumbling, ‘My gun. My rules’. As long as firearm culture exists gravediggers will be never be idle. How many more graves must they dig due to the fact that a person with a firearm sees everybody and everything as a target?
John Tierney,
Association of Hunt Saboteurs,
Dublin 1.
‘Unfounded’ comments by Deputy Collins
EDITOR – I read with interest a statement by Deputy Michael Collins on the front page of The Southern Star dated 10th April.
I think this is very mischievous on his part and a typical vote catching political statement.
As a frontline healthcare worker, working in an area of Dublin that has had one of the highest incidences of Covid consistently since the pandemic began, I was annoyed by his comment that ‘there seems to be an over amount of vaccines in Dublin.’
This is incorrect. These unfounded comments only cause anxiety and frustration among your constituents and in no way helpful to the roll out of vaccines.
Eilish O’Sullivan
Dublin.
Failure and neglect of Government
EDITOR – Figures showing 300 houses in Limerick are in need of refurbishment mean that when Fianna Fail and Fine Gael go knocking on doors there they will get a mouthful from the electorate.
As a visitor from Kinsale to this beautiful city I have witnessed a lot of people sleeping on the streets and others on housing waiting lists for years on end. There are no reasons to justify all of this.
Unfortunately this wanton failure by this Government and neglect of the people of Limerick means come election time this issue will have disproportionate consequences. It will open the door for the kind of change to most of those who support right wing parties of old, as the 300 houses are very fixable.
Noel Harrington,
Kinsale.
