- Those of us in advanced years will remember the journalist John Healy who wrote a book No One Shouted Stop (The Death of an Irish Town), published in 1968, decrying the lack of public outcry against the economic and social decline of the west of Ireland at a time of mass poverty and emigration.
- Today no one is shouting stop to the creeping insidious infection and thrashing of Irish culture and values by ideological saboteurs who are succeeding in destroying much of our Christian heritage and inherent values despite their hugely unrepresentative numbers.
- We see this in areas such as the Social, Personal, and Health Education (SPHE) Curriculum and its cross-infection of the wider education curriculum and in the mismanagement of a seriously flawed and ill-conceived immigration policy.
- The latest exemplar of this madness is the current systematic destruction and vandalisation of Ireland’s urban road infrastructure being implemented throughout Ireland and funded by a multi-billion-euro so-called ‘sustainable mobility’ programmes.
- This initiative prioritises ‘pedestrian and cycling infrastructure’ (in effect, extravagantly wide foot and cycle paths and lamentably inadequate roadway width) over motor traffic, including public transport.
- This destructive reconfiguration might be somewhat more acceptable if implemented after, but certainly not before, targeted urban areas have bye-passes meaning that the reconfigured roads are not servicing through traffic, particularly heavy goods vehicles.
- The imprint of the looney elements of the European Parliament bullying our craven political leaders is all over this scandalous waste of public money, a waste which may even match the extravagant overspend involved in the new Children’s Hospital.
- All this, and so much more, is not so much a case of the tail wagging the dog but, rather, a case of the tail wagging the elephant!
- It is time we shouted stop.
- Pádraig Ó Ruanaí
- (Address with editor)
Traffic jams into the Hospital Roundabout on the High Road.
