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IT’S BECOME ONE of the fixtures of St Patrick’s Day in recent years.
Landmarks around the world from ancient wonders to Las Vegas have turned green for Patrick’s Day as part of a Tourism Ireland initiative to promote Ireland abroad, by literally shining giant emerald-coloured lights on famous buildings and statues to remind everyone about this little country.
Almost 70 landmark buildings and sites are going green this weekend, with some already getting in on the act before Patrick’s Day officially starts.
Niagara Falls
Pyramids and Sphinx
The Temple of Hercules, Amman, Jordan.
The Greening – sorry, Leaning – Tower of Pisa
Gorky Park gate in Moscow
The ‘Armadillo’ in Glasgow
The Eye Film Institute in Amsterdam
Anfield football stadium in Liverpool
Salamanca Town Hall in Spain
The Burj al Arab in Dubai
The Las Vegas sign turns green
(All photos: Tourism Ireland)
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The last paragraph with the councils welcoming it, singing off the same hymn sheet.
How many councils are still pumping raw sewerage? 33 or 32?
@fergusob: 33or 32 towns or villages?
@fergusob: this concerns farms, not municipal. While municipal plants are far from perfect, they are subject to regularish inspections, between councils epa and irish water inspectors. Farmers more or less have free reign to do what they like on their own land. I would doubt there is a farm in the country that isn’t breeching some form of nutrient discharge. Years of state advice ( teagasc) on spreading huge amounts of fertiliser without any preventative methods to stop the run off entering water courses has led us to our current situation
Typical …. just blame the farmers as usual, even if there’s no pollution happening!
@decco: Tighter restrictions are coming it’s unavoidable, not all farmers are ‘custodians of the countryside’ really most are free market capitalists, out spraying round up on crops to suit their schedule, dumping whatever they like, wherever they like.
@decco: Farmers are to blame for everything, and rightly so!
@decco: Delusional.
@decco: Even if, ah come on and cop on to yourself. Farmers probably think they should be paid, for being responsible land owners and fatten their bank accounts. Most of them, don;t give a flying F about environment and will milk anything they can for more money!
How about fewer polluters rather than more inspectors.
@Pato: Because it is easy for these farmers, and they can’t be bothered.
councils are probably still at this as well, and many others. But since the latest bandwagon for the media to jump on is the green one and sing from that, lets just blame all this solely on farmers. Good thing we didnt get reports the past few days on how domestic electric consumption is down but data centers has gone well up. I mean if I were the greens id be eagerly telling my buddies in the media to fire out any kind of stories to distract the masses from demanding answers on that…..
@Tom Newell: What makes you think people are so unintelligent as to solely blame farmers? Most people can hold many thoughts and so perceive many places to assign blame, including to themselves if they are honest.
All the whataboutery and attempts to shift blame just make it look like farmers have no real defence against the allegations that they are polluters. They don’t! They are, that’s just fact, we all are!
The question is now, what do we do to repair the damage, not what can we do to shift focus away from our actions rather than accept reasonable responsibility?
The right to own land comes with the responsibility to steward it properly. That’s clearly not what’s happening.
@Chutes: Well Written! Too many people focus on the problem as opposed to looking for solutions. This to me looks like a perfect science project for All schools around the country. 3/4 children testing the quality of water, at different points of rivers etc, in each given area in the whole of Ireland. Schools could use technology to test the quality of the water and locate the serious offenders, be it sewage or fertilizer, along each river. Because Govt refuse to fund the 60+ inspectors needed, schools could do this and send the more polluted samples to inspectors.
@BarryH: Correct. With technologies like Sigfox, the data could be transmitted multiple times per day and stored on a server. One would have real live data from every river and stream across Ireland.
@BarryH: That’s brilliant in it’s simplicity! As most of the best ideas often are! Bravo!
@David Corrigan: I looked it up. That’s really cool and there absolutely do exist technologies now to help us all but it requires thought like this from those who know but are usually not heard, often the out of the box thinkers just need moments to solve or at least begin to solve our common problems.
You will not find those out of the box thinkers in governmental organisations, such people are quickly marginalised, stifling innovation quite effectively.
The question is how do even begin to go at that as a rational person? I don’t know!
What is a rational response from the citizenry to that? From the essentially powerless, who get a vote to quieten them every few years as a salve for the treatment they actually get as opposed to deserve, from what always seems to be the same old faces in the Dáil, year after disastrous year.
Data Centres
The demonising of farmers continues
@Dave Mercedes2: if they cause problems why should it not be discussed? Should we just allow them to pollute instead?
@Craic_a_tower: data centers are sucking more power while us mere plebs of customers have used less, yet when its brought up the usual climate drum bangers go very quiet and the greens literally go into witness protection they disappear so fast. Just like covid and ukraine the hypocrisy trains are running well on time when it comes climate change
Its time to clean up our rivers and lakes and give our marine life a chance to recover.The onus is on our county councils and farmers primarily the former i would suggest.Irish water have a major role to play also.
@Willie Marty: No money to be made from it so Irish Water won’t be involved. They are a billing company.
@David Corrigan: correct analysis unfortunately and to think they wanted to meter every single household to justify the enormous salaries of their top executives.
Staggering ineptitude.
@Fergal McDonagh: I can’t understand why they don’t use technology to monitor what they need in those waterways. It’s cheap, reliable and easy to use.
Why not just mandate that farmers install monitoring equipment in watercourses on or adjoining their land?
@Chutes: good luck with that one.
@Willie Marty: Oh I’m under no illusion that anyone has the balls to face down the farming lobby in this country but having them install the monitoring equipment to keep their slurry spreading in check seems like the cheapest easiest way to me ngl.
@Chutes: You are on the right track with your thinking. I own a small electronics design business and we have the skills, tools and experience to build products to monitor any parameter you want.
There should be support or grants available to small Irish companies to design & manufacture products that would fill the gaps in the market such as outlined in the report.
Red tape kills of all hope here though. Finance from EI or any of those “business support” entities is next to impossible. Getting your products listed on the top argi-suppliers is a whole other battle altogether.
We have the people and the skills to manufacture solutions in this country. We just don’t have the support.
@David Corrigan: Which is strange when you contrast that with the support given farmers.
@Chutes: Easily sabotaged. Overproduction on farms has to lead to excessive waste disposal and pollution of our rivers. The same problem as in Holland, only they are doing something about it instead of burying their heads in the sand. The only solution is to reduce the herd size and compensate farmers for lost income for reduced production.
@Chutes: Nail on the head. The funds are going to the wrong pockets and in 10 years time, we will still be talking about the same problem.
@michael mcsharry: That makes perfect sense to me Michael! I hadn’t considered sabotage. Fits with the poisoning, shooting and burning I guess.
We massively overproduce for farmers profit, I couldn’t sell my share of the national herd as it turns out and there is only one sensible way to tackle that, the way you suggest!
For how long should they be compensated do you think?
@Chutes: Oh and factor in the fact that farmers will get to keep the land. To no doubt do with what they please in other ways.
Can someone tell me if it’s true nationally that about half of farm income comes from subsidies? I seen it said but haven’t found a reliable source.
@Chutes: I’ve*
@Chutes: basicially correct chutes farmers are being rewarded for food production to the detriment of the enviornment.Its time to reverse the proccess.
@Chutes: You won’t, it is embarrassing so carefully hidden by our politicians. Dairy and beef farming including the food grown for the animals to eat takes up about 66% of all available farm land but produces only 13% of the calories in the food humans eat.
Some joined up thinking please. This will not mend until we have literally thousands of ICWs installed on every suitable stream and river side location, these sucking up vast quantities of carbon, phosphate and nitrate in their spaghnums, these cyclically being harvested for land spreading on organic matter depleted tillage soils or for horticultural use. These should be highly financially rewarded and every farmers desire to possess.
Might be better though just to kill off half the cows and get the product in from elsewhere on the planet instead.
@Nicholas Grubb: It really is a good idea Nicholas, I agree with the exception that it should be highly financially rewarded, it should be basic farm management imo.
@Nicholas Grubb: Interesting but simply replacing the damage done by our herd by importing the product from somewhere else does not deal with the problem of rocketing CO2 emissions globally – which in terms of climate destruction we will suffer the same as the rest of humanity.
@michael mcsharry: It’s blackly comic that we have a national obsession with the weather and so little awareness of the climate powering it!
@michael mcsharry: Sorry, that comment was just a bit of sarcasm, directed at the Planet Ireland gang. They think Ireland is on a separate Planet to Earth.! Get rid of the cows, get rid of the data centres and buy a million bicycles – job done.
This country is strangled with regulations and red tape. Inspectors don’t do anything to foster improvement, they become a selfserving cohort whose chief concern is their salary and status.
We must be the most regulated country in Europe if not the world and what does it get us; an army of self important inspectors swarming around the country adding to our pollution and state costs.
Let the arms of the state clean up their own acts and cease polluting and the citizens will follow the example. And further, let the people who are so fond of drawing up these reports find something productive to do.
@liam: If we are the most regulated country in Europe, how is it that every year our government is forced to pay millions in fines because it won’t enforce EU regulations because it is unwilling to face down powerful lobby groups often subsidised by powerful multinationals corporations like Bayer/Monsanto?
Ireland…all law,no order
Just so everyone here can accept some responsibility for what is seeping from farms into the waterways.
Bet you didn’t know, that a lot of the leftovers from urban sewage plants is spread on farmland.
Most people don’t give a damn, where it goes when they pull the flush. But they are all high and mighty, when it’s someone else. I am not a farmer and have no connection to farming. Just thought you should know, no one has clean hands.
I know a few people, who emigrated to NZ 10 years ago and said they are never moving back here. They say, everything is done right and proper there and Ireland is a banana Republic in comparison. We wouldn’t get away with most of the carry on, we get away with here on a daily basis and building/environment regs are very strict there!
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