EDITOR - For the past two or three months, ferry visitors to Sherkin and Baltimore and residents around the harbour have been treated to a daily and beautiful display of gannets diving, guillemots feeding and harbour porpoise and dolphin surfacing in the area just off Sherkin Quay. It’s been a delight to witness.

I witnessed a pair of fishing boats returning to Baltimore pier on Friday January 16th, having just pair trawled the whole area off Sherkin Quay. I guess that’s the last we’ll be seeing of the gannet and porpoise there.

To quote my neighbour when he saw what was going on: ‘It’s amazing Gaia doesn’t burn us all.’

Magnus Burbanks,

Baltimore.

Legal action against Grok is imperative

EDITOR - Let’s not allow news that X is restricting access to Grok’s sexual abuse features to obscure the criminality that has occurred over the last few weeks, nor that it is continuing its commercial strategy to exploit women and children in other jurisdictions.  Indeed, users in these countries can still access and presumably alter the images of people in countries where it is illegal.

Let’s also not allow X to dictate what the remedial response to its own criminal actions should be. Limiting access to Grok’s sexual abuse function by geo-blocking will be easily side-stepped by users via widely available virtual private networks (VPNs) and other easily accessible privacy technologies. Steps taken by X are a smokescreen for the harm and sexual violence it continues to harbour and create. At its heart, this tool is non-consensual. It is abuse facilitated by technology. It should simply not be available.

As we look for leadership in an increasingly chaotic and dystopian world, the presence of many politicians, businesses and Government departments on X continues to give this social platform legitimacy. It remains imperative that as well as taking legal action, our leaders demonstrate moral authority in removing themselves and their brands from a site that is positioned so clearly against the rights of women and children.

While it is positive that An Garda Síochána are investigating reported breaches, it is notable that so far there have been no consequences imposed by Government or the regulator on the platform, despite laws being broken and the headquarters being located less than 500m from Government buildings. In Europe, X has been threatened with action under the Digital Services Act. However, instead of being robustly enforced, the Digital Services Act has been used as a negotiation tool.

The explosion in the use of Grok following the addition of this new AI feature revealed how willing some people are to commit acts of technology-facilitated sexual violence once it is made easy for them to do so. This shows how fragile progress in the area of sexual violence is and how easy it is to go backwards.

Rachel Morrogh,

Chief Executive,

Dublin Rape Crisis Centre.

Anyone affected by sexual violence including technology-facilitated sexual violence can get free and confidential support on the 24-hour National Rape Crisis Helpline at 1800 77 8888.

An Post need to pull their socks up

EDITOR – Please allow me some space in your esteemed newspaper to say that I was extremely disappointed with the carry-on of An Post this Christmas.

The letters I posted were not delivered in time for Christmas and those posted to me arrived well into the new year.

There were huge vans going around the country with one letter per day and most days there was no post at all.

I have been informed that An Post did not hire sufficient staff to sort the letters in Portlaoise this Christmas so there must have been mounds of post up there which was not sorted on time. I got a Christmas card today, which is the 13th of January.

I certainly will not be posting letters next Christmas if I am still alive!

The news yesterday says that the price of a stamp is increasing again in February. I am sorry to say that if An Post does not pull up their socks they will all be redundant next Christmas.

Eileen McKenna,

Lyre,

Clonakilty.