Sir, – As the year ends, historic reductions in tobacco use have sadly stalled and the Government has fallen far short of delivering its 2013 promise of a “tobacco-free Ireland” by 2025.
However, continuing efforts to bring the large-scale and devastating harm caused by tobacco use can take much-needed courage from Mr Justice Rory Mulcahy’s decisive ruling against the Convenience Stores & Newsagents Association’s challenge to a new licensing fee for selling tobacco and nicotine products (“Retailers fail in challenge to new smoking sales licence fee,” December 19th).
The nation’s health turns on political choices. This ruling is a timely reminder that the Government should face down commercial interests and take action for the public’s health.
Tobacco is a highly addictive and deadly product. Yet its widespread sales dwarf the provision of healthcare. At the most recent count, almost 12,500 retail outlets sold tobacco products. This compares to almost 2,000 pharmacies, 2,500 general practices, and about 50 acute hospitals where healthcare professionals pick up the pieces of tobacco-related harm each day.
RM Block
The sad reality is that this Christmas week – and, indeed, every week – tobacco products continue to kill almost 100 people in Ireland. The sale of any other commercial product causing this scale of harm would be stringently restricted, or more.
While the High Court’s decision is welcome, the reasonableness of strengthening tobacco retail control was never in doubt. The public know this and want greater action. In fact, a 2022 survey found that more than eight in 10 people in Ireland support a complete phase-out of tobacco product sales.
As a new year approaches, and many of our family, friends and loved ones who smoke resolve to quit, let’s use 2026 to move discussion on from simply controlling tobacco to beginning a phase-out of tobacco products for once and for all. – Yours, etc,
Dr PAUL KAVANAGH,
Chair, Clinical Advisory Group on Smoking and E-Cigarettes,
Royal College of Physicians of Ireland.
Government and tighter budgets
Sir, – With respect to the Government proposing “tighter budgets” with a 6 per cent cap on annual spending hikes, I feel it is worth pointing out that this innocuous looking percentage is atop an already significant pile of government expenditure built up in recent years (“Tighter budgets in prospect under planned 6 per cent cap on spending hikes,” December 18th).
The Government’s “Where My Money Goes” website (www.where
yourmoneygoes.gov.ie) shows that in the 10 years 2016-2026 State spending will have increased from ¤68 billion to ¤132 billion, with the Fiscal Advisory Council expecting overshoots in 2026 versus that plan.
We will be within touching distance of a doubling of expenditure in 10 years.
The new target of 6 per cent annual rises, up from an oft-exceeded previous target of 5 per cent, compounds this: 6 per cent amounts to ¤8 billion of additional room for further budget hikes at 2026 spending levels versus an equivalent ¤4 billion back at 2016 spending levels.
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett once remarked that “the nature of compound interest is it behaves like a snowball of sticky snow”. That’s great news when you’re talking about the growth of your investments, but less so when discussing State spending.
If there is any knock to the ¤34 billion of expected corporation taxes, and a further impact to income tax from employment in the multinational sector, the correction required to State spending and taxes on the domestic economy will be swift and savage in nature.
We need to break our broad political consensus to “spend it when we have it” and try to save substantially more into a national wealth fund to offset a downturn, a la Norway and its oil windfall.
I imagine you probably received letters substantively similar to this one in the early to mid-2000s. – Yours, etc,
AARON McKENNA,
Clonee,
Co Meath.
Schools funding
Sir, - There are two reasons that we constantly see stories about schools facing a funding crises. The first is that the amount of funding provided to schools is inadequate.
In 2010, the standard capitation grant which covers the running cost of a school was €200 per pupil; in 2025 it had increased to €224. However, this rise failed to keep pace with price increases.
A detailed analysis of 2018-19 and 2023-24 primary school accounts (707 school sample), commissioned by the Catholic Primary School Management Association (CPSMA), showed expenditure on many essential items for schools had increased significantly over the past few years. For example, heating was up 83 per cent over the period and water/refuse costs up 51 per cent.
Utility costs now consume 6.1 per cent of expenditure compared with 3.3 per cent in 2019.
While inflation is a major factor, schools purchase a greater range of goods and services than they did in 2010. To give just one example: school management information systems (up 199 per cent over the same period) were barely heard of in 2010; now they are a vital tool in running a school.
To put these figures in some context, the total cost of standard capitation grant in 2025 was about €115 million compared with €300 million for the free schools meals scheme or €205 million for the running cost of the Houses of the Oireachtas.
Expenditure on the capitation grant represents just 0.09 per cent of Government expenditure.
The second reason is that the timing of the payment of funds creates cashflow issues at some times in the year, notably in the run-up to Christmas.
The recent announcement by the Department of Education that the minor works grant would be paid in December will greatly assist schools with their current cash flow issues.
The information that in future, this grant will be paid in December/ January will reduce unnecessary stress and provide greater surety with budgeting.
The increase in the standard rate of capitation by €50 and the fixing in the grant calendar of the minor works and ICT grants to a December/ January timeframe represent significant progress for primary schools.
We are grateful to Minister for Education Helen McEntee and her officials for this progress.
We are not yet at the promised land of adequate funding but at long last, we are at least within sight of it. If, as one of your correspondents suggested, primary schools were paid the same level of capitation as their post-primary colleagues, the problem would finally be solved and your readers spared reading of schools in distress.
More importantly, school principals and boards of management could focus on teaching and learning rather than fundraising. – Yours, etc,
SÉAMUS MULCONRY,
General Secretary,
Catholic Primary Schools Management Association,
St Patrick’s College,
Maynooth,
Co Kildare.
Where are all the face masks?
Sir, – It has been widely reported that cases of flu (and associated deaths) are increasing in Ireland. During the past week I visited a number of pharmacies in Cork (where I live) to attempt to buy some face masks to limit my exposure to this airborne highly infectious disease.
On each occasion I was told, “no face masks, we don’t stock them anymore”. Some of the pharmacy staff were moved to add, “it seems strange”. I agree, it’s very odd.
Have we forgotten the basics of public health so soon after the Covid pandemic? Face masks are an effective, low-cost way to limit the spread of many common winter ailments.
But it appears our outposts of public health are not stocking this basic item. Why? – Yours, etc,
FIONN ROGAN,
Ballincollig,
Cork
Global devastation
Sir, – Sadly, this year will be widely remembered for the misery and suffering caused by brutal conflicts around the world.
Most prominently in Gaza, where we have seen nightly on our TV screens the devastating impact of relentless attacks by Israel from land, air and sea.
More than 70,000 Palestinians have now been killed, with many thousands more missing beneath the rubble. In August, the confirmation of famine brought a new low, and the outrage of an ever-increasing number of preventable deaths from starvation.
Despite more than two months since a so-called ceasefire was agreed, we are still seeing dozens of Palestinians killed each week and only a quarter of the aid agreed entering Gaza.
With winter now upon us, tens of thousands of families living in makeshift tents or in the remnants of their bombed-out homes continue to suffer, exposed to storms, flooding and dropping temperatures.
While the world’s gaze has rightly been drawn to the horror in Gaza, many other conflicts that need hands-on attention from the international community have flown largely under the radar.
In Sudan, now the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, large numbers of people have been killed in Darfur. The stories I personally heard in South Sudan from people fleeing across the border were heartbreaking. Too many had become separated from their family on the arduous journey and now have no choice but to live hand to mouth in refugee camps.
A key focus for Christian Aid Ireland has been on raising awareness of another overlooked conflict, the humanitarian crisis in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Since the beginning of this year, fighting between the armed group M23 and government forces intensified and spread throughout north and south Kivu provinces, killing about 7,000 people and forcing 1.6 million people from their homes. In total, more than five million people are now displaced in eastern DRC.
The fighting uprooted people from their homes, including many already living in displacement camps after fleeing earlier bouts of conflict.
The fear of further fighting, as well as the risk of death and serious injury from unexploded ordinance has prevented many subsistence farmers from sowing their crops.
Desperate to escape the killing as well as rampant sexual violence, people fled whichever way they could, often on foot through thick bush or even by crossing nearby Lake Kivu.
Christian Aid Ireland heard from our local partner how a number of people from one village drowned while attempting to flee by canoe.
Sadly, the crisis shows little sign of dissipating anytime soon. In recent weeks, M23 have taken control of even more territory in eastern DRC, forcing more than 500,000 people to flee their homes in just over a week. The UN has warned that the broader region is at risk of being engulfed by war.
For humanitarian agencies like Christian Aid Ireland, the challenge of responding to multiple crises around the world, both those in and out of the news bulletins, is made harder by a global reduction in aid spending.
Yet, thankfully, we also know from our day-to-day interaction with people right across Ireland that the public are committed to doing all they can to help those most in need.
The world must not look away from the crisis in eastern DRC and other forgotten conflicts.
We can only hope that in the new year, the international community pivots from overlooking devastating conflicts around the world and instead focuses their energies on ending hostilities and alleviating suffering. There is always time to do the right thing. Countless lives are depending on it. – Yours, etc,
ROSAMOND BENNETT,
Chief Executive,
Christian Aid Ireland,
Dublin 2.
Venezuela and the US
Sir, – It is deeply disappointing that the western world is ignoring that a sovereign country, Venezuela, is being threatened by the US.
Whatever your thoughts on the political leaning of the present government in Venezuela, it cannot be allowed that the US acts like a thug in relation to international rights. Why isn’t this country and the EU speaking and putting down motions at the UN?
I am tired of the double standards that are applied in relation to international law. – Yours, etc,
PAUL DORAN,
Clondalkin,
Dublin 22.
What’s in a name?
Sir – In the interesting article (“Trump agus na Gaeil” on TG4, TV & Radio, December 18th), Ed Power is right to be impressed by the presence of Irish Gaelic in North America.
However, Gaelic languages go even further, perhaps all the way to the Oval Office.
It’s not impossible that the current president of the United States has a smattering of Scots Gaelic, his mother’s native language.
Máiri Anna Nic Leóid (1912-2000), the future Mrs Mary MacLeod Trump, was born and raised on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. Scots Gaelic was her first language; she only learned English later in school.
She gave her son a wonderfully Scots Gaelic name, which also proved rather fateful. Donald, like the Irish equivalent Dónal, in typical Trumpian modesty, means no less than “ruler of the world”.
Be careful what you name your children. – Yours, etc,
CIARÁN MAC GUILL,
Clichy,
France.
Not a banker
Sir, – Banks in Ireland keep wondering why people my age have zero loyalty to them. My bank is a good example of why.
Their whole billing structure feels designed to squeeze every cent possible out of customers. Fees layered on fees, confusing charges, systems that always seem to benefit the bank and never the person using it.
They’ve been fined for this kind of behaviour before, so it’s not exactly a surprise. It shows.
What really gets me is how little actual service exists. Branches close at 5pm. No weekends. No flexibility. Exactly the hours that suit the bank, not the people paying for it. For millennials trying to work, travel or just live normal lives, it’s useless.
I dealt with my bank over an internal error that damaged my credit rating. What followed was rudeness, defensiveness and delay. No urgency. No accountability.
I had to raise the same complaint four times before anything even started to move. That’s not bad luck; that’s how the system works.
Banks like mine feel like a boomer industry that never updated its attitude. If you’re looking for basic competence or respect as a customer, honestly, look somewhere else. This isn’t it. – Yours, etc,
ALAN KELLY,
Straffan,
Co Kildare.
Women in the church
Sir, – Is it not curious, to say the least, that Mary, who brought Jesus into the world, would not be allowed to be a deacon in the Catholic Church today? – Yours, etc,
KARL DOHERTY.
Coleraine,
Co Derry.
