On Irish Water - Village Magazine

November 2014 19

On Irish Water

Dear Editor:

I wonder if anyone is considering the implications for

this proposed referendum that is being sought to protect

us from the privatisation of Irish Water. Consider the

following if you will:

Insidious, Transatlantic Trade and Investment

Partnerships (TTIPs) have been under secret negotiation

since summer 2013. The biggest bilateral trade deal in

history between the EU and the US.

The primary focus of these negotiations, which are

on-going, is on curbing regulation, including through

further expanding the role of extrajudicial tribunals

which are being designed to allow corporations and

potential investors bypass national courts and to

challenge governments who pass regulations that harm

their corporate interests. Such tribunals have already

been set up under the Canada/US NAFTA agreements,

and could be set up here – these tribunals are causing

problems in areas like the protection of water quality

which is being threatened by fracking.

The questions I pose are these: What if these secret

TTIP negotiations are concluded in Europe, unelected

oﬃcials will decide and there is no democratic vote

taken over ﬁnalisation of these proposals. What then

if the protections that have been taken to keep Irish

Water a public utility company are challenged by some

corporation that feels it is being disadvantaged? What if

the existing EU competition authority laws (Directives)

conclude that Ireland cannot/ should not prevent

Corporatisation of our water utility? What then will we

do?

No Irish politician, government or opposition, is

monitoring this as far as I am aware. However, the new

EU Ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly, was so concerned

about the lack of information coming into the public

arena – that she commenced a public consultation on

this matter.

Derrick Hambleton

Kingston, Galway

On the Irish Times and Abortion

Dear Editor:

How charming of a spokesperson for the Pro Life

Campaign, the very moniker of which is a masterstroke

of question-begging sophistry, to begin an article by

quoting CP Scott on the sacredness of facts (Village,

October 2014)!

The ostensible (hypo)thesis of Dr Ruth Cullen’s piece

centres on a tired fundamentalist shibboleth: the media’s

(the Irish Times’ in this case) pushing of the Liberal

Agenda. However, this contention merely serves as the

vehicle for a fairly predictable whistle-stop tour of all

the stock PLC myth-mongering Newspeak catchphrases,

each one debunked so many times as not to warrant the

oxygen of further critical engagement. (It’s laughable,

for instance, that the best-little-country-in-the-world-

without-abortion-to-be-a-mammy ﬁb is still getting an

outing.)

Indeed there are too many red herrings to gut here,

so I’d like to volunteer just three unsolicited answers to

three of Dr Cullen’s gratingly chin-strokey rhetorical

questions, not to defend the increasingly rubbish IT, but

merely to illustrate the PLC’s wilful disregard for the

facts they always claim to cherish.

Dr Cullen ponders why the IT did not report on

the progress of the newborn in the Ms Y case. It did.

Repeatedly. The IT duly reported in pretty much every

article about the case that the infant was in care and

progressing quite well. Save attempting to interview a

26-week-old newborn, what else was it to do?

“Why did [the case of the woman from Ireland who

died in a London taxi after an abortion] merit only a

ﬂeeting mention in the Irish Times”? It didn’t. It merited

front-page headlines (plural) over the days it broke (22

and 23 July 2013), then further prominent coverage

in subsequent days. I’m not sure from what distorted

vantage this constitutes “a ﬂeeting mention”, unless

Dr Cullen starts her morning read of the paper at the

obituaries and works her way backwards. The case

made (international) headlines precisely because legal

abortion in appropriate medical environments has an

enviable safety record.

Claiming or implying that a medical procedure that

is 14 times safer than childbirth (Raymond and Grimes

(2012)) is a danger to women’s lives by appealing to one

tragic anomaly is anecdotal cherry-picking at its most

transparently disingenuous.

Furthermore, Dr Cullen naturally neglects to mention

that the woman in question had a medical condition

that predisposed her to a high risk of miscarriage, and

she had the abortion at 20 weeks’ gestation because,

according to her partner, Ireland’s NIMBY abortion laws,

which the PLC obviously supports, forced the couple

to scrimp and save for the costs of abortion tourism.

Perhaps, had she received an earlier-term abortion

and the unbroken continuum of care she desired and

deserved in her own country, well... The case is, if it’s to

be used as an argument at all, more an argument against

the dangerous hypocrisy of Ireland’s unceremoniously

dumping its abortion-seekers on Blighty’s shores, as well

as the false dichotomy between risk to health and risk to

life in Irish abortion law.

“The onesidedness must leave the neutral observer

wondering is the Irish Times so patronising as to think

the public cannot be trusted to hear both sides of the story

and make up their own minds”. Answer: Breda O’Brien,

John Waters (until his petulant defection), numerous

anti-choice op-eds, many from spokespersons from the

PLC, countless Letters to the Editor from Catholic priests

and bishops and other extreme natalists, etc. It could be

argued that this in fact constitutes a disproportionately

thorough airing of anti-choice sentiment, given its

ever-dwindling currency among the population of 21st-

century Ireland.

Perhaps, given all the above, a more apt and august

opening gambit to the good doctor’s piece might have

been found in the wisdom of Homer J Simpson: “You can

use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true.

Facts schmacts”.

Eoin Bates

Oxford, UK

November 2014

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