There’s no bus to Clonakilty on my days off

EDITOR – There is an issue that has been bothering me and affecting my day-to-day life and I’m hoping you can help me find a solution to this problem that also bothers other people.

I’m a 16-year-old transition year student living in Rossmore, which is a rural area about 10km outside of Clonakilty.

I get a school bus to school every morning. This highly benefits me as my parents are not able to drive me into school due to their jobs.

This is where my problem begins. On my days off school, if I want to go to Clonakilty or other areas, I find myself stuck for a lift and I end up being rooted at home. I think it’s not only young teenagers this affects, it’s also elderly people and people who simply cannot drive or cannot afford to drive. This leaves a huge strain on people without cars that live in rural areas and leaves them with very few options of transportation.

I see there are plans for more routes being planned, but I believe that transport operators, such as the ‘Local Link’ should have a wider range of bus stops around rural areas. Small villages have been excluded and forgotten about, which I believe is very unfair. There should be more of these buses with different routes around West Cork to give more people chances in rural areas. This would help out so many people and make their lives easier and less stressful.

Holly McCarthy,

Rossmore,

Clonakilty.

We only have one shot at saving the curlew

EDITOR – In a line from the ballad Michael it was left to the unseen curlew in the damp grass to tell the world that the Big Fella had fallen at Béal na Bláth. 

Who will it be left to tell the world that in the Irish countryside the decurved bill one is gone?

The curlew, a wader resident of rough pastures, meadows and heather, could be extinct as a breeding species in Ireland before 2030.

From agricultural intensification, disturbance, pollution, climate change, and shooting (outlawed in 2012) the curlew is ecocide hemmed in.

While the conservation efforts such as the Curlew Conservation Programme and the Irish Breeding Curlew EIP and GLAS have been striving to help the curlew, the factors that brought a 98% decline in thirty years have been and continue to be very much present, and active on a larger and more intensive scale.

If we lose the curlew it will represent a totemic milestone that Ireland has failed in the protection of its biodiversity and its inhabitants.

And now, 63% of Ireland’s bird species are flying into conservation trouble. 

If the battle to save the curlew is lost, then our view of other bird species will be through a digital prism.

We get an insight into where our government eyes are focused when, for 2023, €72.8m was allocated to the horse racing industry and €18.2m to the greyhound racing industry.

Allowing taxpayers’ money to flow annually into the veins of two industries that promote animal abuse conservation while science-driven conservation projects have a funding model based on receiving penny scraps shows a government with a serious vision problem. 

The Big Fella was felled by one shot.   

With the curlew we really have only one shot at saving this sentinel of the shoreline or else its lonesome call of ‘cur..lee, cur..lee’  will stream no more across the sky.

John Tierney,

Campaigns director

Association of Hunt Saboteurs,

Dublin 1.

Rules of courtesy and care should apply more widely

EDITOR – The Rules of the Road 1967 contained, to the best of my recollection, on the first page, a simple three-word guide or motto for road users which was a common sense umbrella for all the rules – ‘care, courtesy and consideration.’

Sadly, even tragically, this advice and guide to good road use seems to have disappeared from the modern approach to education of road users and, more importantly, from the mindset of road users.

This simple statement can equally be applied to life in general. 

Would we all not benefit greatly if, as a people, we adopted this guide?

Reddy O’Regan,

Tragumna.

Security equipment bought with taxpayer’s money

EDITOR – Once again questions are raised in relation to civil service purchasing –  this time it seems ‘we’ purchased security equipment currently in use in the Houses of Oireachtas, from China.

How could ‘we’ be so stupid?

Ah but who cares – it’s only taxpayers’ money and ‘security’ is not a matter for civil servants.

Michael A Moriarty,

Rochestown,

Cork.