Month: July 2018

You know you’re pushing on when most of your friends are either retired or about to retire. It’s a sign that time is marching on and it’s not making any allowances for you no matter how special you think you are.

As one friend put it, we’re in the departure lounge. He might be right but I’m not ready to pop my clogs just yet. It’s not all doom and gloom though because times have changed and we’re living longer so I won’t be planning my wake for another while. At least, I hope not.

There was a time when life was more predictable. We spent our formative years in school, dealing with whatever torture was inflicted upon us at the hands of our tormentors and then we left. Battered and bruised, we headed towards the next stage of life which was employment.

Those who listened to their mothers, gravitated towards the bank or the civil service. The select few went on to third level education. Others learned a trade while the rest grabbed a pick and a shovel and made their way through life as best they could.

Everybody worked until they reached the age of 65 and then prepared for retirement. They got a gold watch, a pipe and a pair of slippers and that was that, all the best.

I often wondered why it was determined that a gold watch was the best thing to give to someone retiring. They got a quality time piece at the very stage in their lives when they no longer needed to know whether it was day or night.

It would have made more sense to give new employees a gold watch when they started working so they would turn up on time, and then take it off them when they retired. Not the other way around.

Anyway, back in the day, retirees took up gardening, if they had a garden, or else they just sat by the fire and waited for the inevitable. Leisure activities weren’t as common as they are now, and people weren’t as fit either. Jogging was unheard of and if you saw someone running on the road you just assumed they were being chased by an angry husband or a police officer.

It wasn’t unusual for people to die within a few years of retiring but that has changed. We are living and working longer which means that we must change the way we plan for our old age. There will be more of us around so there will be a greater demand on the services of those who devote their lives to caring for oldies like us. They will have to work harder.

The notion of a long and healthy life is a welcome prospect for most of us, but a shorter life would be preferable if things become unpleasant. Few of us relish the idea of having to be spoon fed or having to be introduced to our family members every time they visit.

Financial independence is another concern because nobody wants to be a burden on the family.

The days of guaranteed 30 to 35 years of secure employment are well gone and long-term job security is rare. That presents a difficulty for people entering the jobs market because while the odds favour them living longer, the chances are that they won’t have a job for life, but they will still have to support themselves.

Retirement is a major life event for us all and we need to be ready for it. Those who have an active social life with interests outside work, seem to adapt better than those whose lives revolve around their workplace and their colleagues.

It’s very much an individual thing and there are many retirees who will tell you they find it hard to pass the time while there are plenty more who will tell you that there aren’t enough hours in the day.

But the way things are going, todays’ young people won’t be retiring until they reach their nineties. They won’t have to worry about what they are going to do with their free time because they won’t have any. Especially if they live in Japan.

The Japanese population is getting older and remaining healthier and now it seems that they may need to work longer too. Economists say if Japan wants to solve its labour shortage, it will have to keep people working into their seventies. It has one of the world’s oldest populations with over a quarter of the people being over 65 years of age.

Japan has the world’s longest life expectancy and it estimated that by 2050, women in the country on average, will live past 90. They also have a low birth rate which means that the working population is shrinking while the number of workers over the age of 65, rose to 7.3 million in 2015.

Germany, France, Italy and the UK have all agreed to raise the state pension age between now and 2028 and it’s rising here too. So, don’t be surprised to see old policemen shuffling after arthritic robbers or ancient taxi drivers going around in circles with passengers who have forgotten where they live.

On the other hand, journalist, Alistair Cooke read his weekly Letter from America, to an estimated radio audience of 34 million until a month before he died at ninety-five. David Attenborough is still trundling through the rain forests at ninety years of age.

Old age might get very confusing, but thankfully, I don’t have to worry about that for now. But I feel sorry for the young lady who just walked into my house claiming to be my daughter and the child with her who seems to think I’m his grandad. They’re very young to be losing the plot.

Will Goodbody of RTE presented a series of reports on TV recently about the accident in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukraine back in 1986. He looked at the fallout from the accident and the effect it had on the people living in the surrounding areas.

It’s the first programme I have seen on that subject for quite a while, but there was a time when it was never too far from my mind. A time, when for a group of us, it occupied our thoughts, morning, noon and night and regularly took us away from our families.

It’s twenty years since myself and John O’Connor were fundraising around Cork city and county for Chernobyl related charities. We probably drove people nuts back then with all the fundraising events, but we collected a lot of money through the generosity of Cork people.

We also collected a huge amount of medical supplies, clothes, toys and food stuffs. School kids loved to get involved in those days and they brought their packets of rice, pasta or whatever into the classroom. We weren’t the only ones at it either, it was going on across the country and for a few years it was almost a national obsession.

Chernobyl was a big story at the time and Irish people responded in a massive way to the plight of the sick children and they answered the call as they always do. These days, it’s not so topical and there are many younger people who have never even heard of Chernobyl. After all, it happened over 30 years ago.

It was on April 26th, 1986 that the nuclear disaster occurred at the Chernobyl plant in the former USSR (now Ukraine). At 1.23am the core in a reactor was blown apart by a massive explosion releasing its deadly radioactive contents high into the air. It remains the world’s worst civil nuclear disaster. An official exclusion zone around the plant remains in place, extending for 30 kilometres and it is one of the most radioactive places on Earth.

John and I took part in several humanitarian aid convoys to areas of Belarus and Western Russia that were affected, and we spent a few years driving trucks and ambulances there to deliver food, medical supplies and clothes that were badly needed.

We often had up to a hundred people travelling on these convoys, in a fleet of trucks, vans and ambulances. We crept across Europe like a long lumbering snake, making slow progress. Getting a group that size from Ireland to Belarus was challenging and these convoys often stretched out for a couple of kilometres along the road.

Just getting everyone into a filling station for fuel and back onto the road again was complicated. Keeping everyone together was also challenging, particularly in traffic, but over time we became very efficient at it.

Sleeping in the vehicles was uncomfortable at the best of times but especially when the weather was cold. Finding a space to lie down in the cramped conditions wasn’t always easy either. We made the best of it though and each vehicle was fitted with a CB radio, so the airwaves were always full of banter and slagging.

Delivering aid to the various villages, orphanages, day care centres and hospitals was hard work. Unloading 40-foot containers by hand was physically demanding, especially in places where the boxes had to be carried up several flights of stairs or down into dusty basements.

It was normally sweaty and dusty work and the lack of shower facilities meant we were frequently a smelly bunch of people. Baby wipes were always in demand but despite the hardship, the atmosphere was generally good, and the work was rewarding.

Many of us would probably struggle now with the physical effort required for this kind of labour. Age, damaged backs, wonky knees and hips have taken their toll and many of us have given up the ghost and we have left the heavy lifting to a younger generation.

One character leading the way in those days, was Simon Walsh. Simon is from Whitegate and is one of the founding members of the Chernobyl Children’s Trust (CCT). This organisation is still carrying on with the effort and Simon is still pulling the strings and making regular visits to that part of the world.

Chernobyl Children’s Trust is a registered charity set up and run by Irish volunteers committed to helping impoverished children living in contaminated and disadvantaged areas. They support the Children’s Oncology Centre in Belarus where children and young adults with various cancers, receive life-saving treatments.

They’re doing great work but unfortunately, for charities like this, time marches on and people forget. For many, the accident at Chernobyl is a distant memory. It’s no longer on the radar of the young people and it is young people who are needed to carry on the work that us geriatrics are no longer capable of.

For me personally, I have great memories of those journeys, the people I met and the friends I made. Sure, we saw a lot of sickness, sorrow and heart break, but we also achieved a lot and improved the quality of life for many kids and families. Everybody who contributed to the fundraising, whether it was donating tinned rice, nappies, toys or money, played a part in improving the lives of many in Belarus and for that we will always be grateful.

It was an immensely rewarding experience for John and myself and if I had my time over, I would do the same again and I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in giving some time to a cause.

If you fancy a life changing experience, have a look at the Chernobyl Children’s Trust website. You might catch the bug. www.chernobylchildrenstrust.ie

I have no great interest in being on the open sea. As a rule, I prefer to be on dry land which is a bit unusual given my background.

My grandfather spent his life working on boats in the Cork Harbour area. They were the D-O-D boats used by the Department of Defence to carry employees of the naval service and the army from Spike Island and Haulbowline to and from Cobh.

My great grandfather worked on the tenders that transferred passengers and their luggage to and from the liners. In those days, the liners were only permitted to come as far as the entrance to Cork Harbour and they would have to lay up there because the inner harbour was too shallow to accommodate them.

The passengers were ferried in and out of Cobh on these tenders and it’s only relatively recently that liners have been able to berth at the quayside in the town. It’s big business now and Port of Cork anticipates that 94 liners will visit in 2018.

The house I grew up in overlooked the harbour, so I was used to seeing all the activity going on out on the water. On a nice summer evening, there was nothing better than sitting in the front room with the window open and listening to the sound of the boats going up and down the river.

Many of my friends went on to carve out careers for themselves in the maritime industry and some of them are still at it but it wasn’t something that ever interested me. I had no desire to go to sea, and I had never set foot on a liner until recently.

Until a few weeks ago, the largest vessel I had ever experienced was a car ferry. I had travelled from Cork to Swansea a few times and used the Rosslare to Fishguard ferry as well, but they could hardly be described as luxurious. I can remember coming back from Swansea during the 1970’s with a friend of mine and it wasn’t a pleasant experience.

We were young and penniless, so we didn’t have the comfort of a cabin. We had intended grabbing a half decent seat somewhere and doing the best we could with it. The crossing turned out to be a nightmare and the sea was dog rough.

There were lots of older people sitting in the lounge area and many of them were getting sick. My buddy and I spent most of our time handing out sick bags. It was difficult to even walk around but we were young and fit at the time. I have no idea how we managed to avoid the vomiting bug, but I remember we got a free meal from the staff in the canteen for our efforts.

Maybe that experience had something to do with my lack of interest in nautical matters. But a couple of years ago, I received an invitation to visit the ‘Independence of the Seas’ while it was in Cobh. This is one of the bigger liners and a member of the Royal Caribbean family.

This ship dominates the landscape when it comes to town but when you go inside you really get an appreciation of the size of this thing, The elevators go up 14 floors and it’s 1,112 feet long which is almost the length of four soccer fields laid out end to end and it’s as wide as five tennis courts placed side by side.

It needs to be large because it accommodates a small town. When it’s full, it holds 4,375 passengers and a crew of 1,360. It has a dozen bars and lounges and a selection of restaurants, three swimming pools, six whirlpools, theatres, a casino and plenty more to keep the young and old occupied.

That’s another thing. I had always associated cruises with an older, more settled age group, so I was surprised to see so many youngsters on board. When I visited, most of the passengers had already headed off for the day on various tours but a lot of the younger ones were playing in the waterpark and the pools.

Before leaving the ship, I had lunch and the mind boggles when you think of what it takes to feed this amount of people. The self-service area was enormous, and even maintaining a constant supply of clean cutlery was a feat in itself.

I enjoyed my visit and the staff went out of their way to make me feel comfortable. I was glad I took the opportunity to have a look around but I’m not anymore inclined to take a cruise now than I was previously. I can see how it might appeal to some, but it’s not for me.

They have packages to suit all tastes but they’re not cheap. A ball park figure for two people, spending 11 nights on board, is probably going to cost in the region of €4,000. The price will be determined by your choice of ship, the duration of the trip and where in the world you want to go and the package you choose.

A room with a balcony is more expensive than a room without a view of the outside world and your drinks package will determine what beverages are available to you. I’m told by people who have been on cruises that picking the right package is crucial. Otherwise you could end up paying dearly for extras.

They also agree that one of the best aspects of a cruise is waking up in a new port every day with the opportunity to see and explore new places and I understand how that scene appeals to a lot of people. I’m just not one of them.

But check it out yourself, it might be for you.

Alan Bailey is a retired detective sergeant who served for 36 years in An Garda Siochana. He wrote an article recently where he criticised the decision by the Garda Representative Association to organise a “blue flu” back in 1998.

The “blue flu” was a day of protest by the rank and file members of An Garda Siochana where over 5,000 gardaí reported sick and unfit for duty on a particular day. They took this unusual step because they were not legally allowed to strike but they felt that they had been pushed to the limit and needed to make a point.

Mr. Baily said; “Twenty years ago, when I was a garda, I succumbed to peer pressure and joined in the “blue flu” on May 1, 1998. To this day I regret my decision. I even view it as the low point of my career. We, as guardians of the peace, walked away from our posts and left the country unprotected. Shame on us.”

I think he’s stretching it a bit to say that the country was left unprotected. That day of action had been on the cards for some considerable time and there was a contingency plan in place to cover such an event. Members who were essential to State security, and certain other roles, were exempt from taking part in the protest while the army was also placed on standby.

All other ranks apart from regular gardai were also available for duty, including student gardai. While it wasn’t a perfect solution, the country was hardly unprotected.

He also suggested that the action destroyed the faith and confidence the Irish public had in An Garda Siochana, a trust built upon the personal sacrifices made by so many that went before. In the eyes of the public, he says, the Force has never recovered.

I also served for 36 years in that organisation and like Alan, I remember that day well. It was stressful for everyone because it was the first time the gardaí had challenged authority to that extent. It went against the grain to walk out and we all hoped that it wouldn’t come to that. But it did.

Many of us debated the rights and wrongs of that action and there were plenty who disagreed with it. But at the end of the day, we only had a representative association. That didn’t have anything close to the strength of a trade union, but it was all we had. As weak as it was, if we didn’t stand together, then there wouldn’t have been much point in even continuing with that.

Alan also points out that in 2016, both the AGSI and the Garda Representative Association (GRA) almost brought down the government with threats of strike action in support of pay claims. The cabinet capitulated, and he reckons that it was a pyrrhic victory, won by showing just how little some gardai cared for the welfare of those they are paid to protect.

I think that’s a bit harsh. In my opinion, AGSI and the GRA had little choice but to turn up the heat and they did it precisely because they did care, and they knew that the public was not getting a proper service because senior management was struggling to provide effective leadership.

The then garda commissioner, The Minister for Justice and other politicians were calling on the gardai to defer the proposed strike. They were suggesting that the relationship between the gardai and the community would deteriorate if the strike went ahead. They were concerned that the security of the State would be diminished, and the lives of its citizens would be put at risk.

It was wonderful to see this sudden interest in the quality of the service being provided by An Garda Siochana. Senior management and politicians could be about to experience the practicalities of running a police force with limited resources. If nothing else, the threat of industrial action was concentrating the minds and forcing them to consider the long-term future of An Garda Siochana.

The lack of confidence in garda management over a long period led to huge frustration which spilled over into a threat of industrial action. Maybe the “Blue-flu” and the threatened strike weren’t the proper course of action, but the alternative was to do nothing and that wasn’t acceptable either because change was needed.

The report by PricewaterhouseCooper proved that change was needed and found that cronyism and nepotism were flourishing within the Force and that while gardai are committed to their units and their colleagues, they do not hold senior management in high esteem.

That audit should make stark reading for senior management but whether they take any notice of it remains to be seen. Historically, they haven’t been great at looking inwards, preferring instead to circle the wagons, ride out the criticism and maintain the status quo.

The Garda Inspectorate recommended significant restructuring of the ranks. In its Changing Policing in Ireland report, published in 2015, the inspectorate recommended a cut in the number of garda regions from six to three, to help improve efficiency. It also suggested a drop in the number of senior gardai and the introduction of a divisional model of policing.

Management did not adopt the Inspectorate’s recommendations on the grounds that a “big bang” approach would have jeopardised the force’s relationship with the community. They have always been concerned about the force’s relationship with the community, but just not enough to bring about change.

Now change has been forced upon them in the form of a new Garda Commissioner. Drew Harris, formerly of the P.S.N.I, takes up the reins in September and for the first time ever, the position has been filled by a man who is not part of the system.

Interesting times lay ahead.

We’ve had a great run of good weather recently and it’s very welcome. We appreciate it because it is a rare occurrence. When the sun shines here for more than an hour, we get covered in a mixture of sun cream and BBQ smoke. It’s great. It helps us to forget the previous ten months of misery.

It’s not that long ago we were either being washed away, up to our knees in snow or being knocked over by storm force winds but that’s all forgotten about now. The sun has a magical quality that erases all bad memories and replaces them with happy thoughts.

There is one side effect though and that’s the possibility that we might all die from the drought. We are already being advised to water the garden with a can instead of a hose and not to fill the paddling pools or wash the car. This is advice from Irish Water.

How we can possibly be short of water after the winter we’ve had is beyond me. It’s only a short while ago we thought we were all going to drown and suddenly we’ve become a desert. We need to calm down a bit. It won’t be too long before we get more rain because it’s never too far away and even I can predict that.

Weather forecasting is a serious business and there is a lot of science involved in it. It’s way too technical for my small brain and I’m just happy to see the weather people smiling and giving us good news for a change.

We’ve seen too much of the National Coordination Group in recent months. These people only get together when the forecast is looking grim. When you see them on the TV standing in front of maps and charts, with soldiers on one side and gardaí on the other, then you know things are about to go pear shaped.

They’ve had some major incidents to deal with like Ophelia, the Beast from the East and Storm Emma and they are learning from those experiences. In fairness to all involved, they are very good at keeping everyone informed and they do their best to keep us safe. They have access to the best technology and the best experts so the information they give us is usually spot on.

In normal times, we rely on the forecasters on our local radio stations to keep us in the loop but they’re not always as accurate. The weather can change at the drop of a hat and it’s not unusual to experience the four seasons in one day. It’s changeable and we hear that expression every day and it covers a multitude.

Local forecasters can often be at odds with one another too and it’s not unusual to get different weather predictions for the same locality. That’s hardly surprising given that we are a such small little island where a change in the wind direction can alter our weather very quickly and these people don’t have access to the same resources as the National Coordination Group either.

So sometimes we put on the winter woollies, hat, scarf and gloves but as soon as we leave the house, we find that the sun is shining, and the sweat is running down the back of our necks. By the time we change into a T-shirt and shorts, it’s snowing and we’re exhibiting signs of hypothermia.

Billy Connolly, the Scottish comedian, was describing the weather in his native country and he said there were only two seasons, winter and July. That sounds familiar and it could be applied here too.

So, it must be hard to get it right which is why I’m wondering if maybe the local weather people just throw a bit of everything into the mix to cover all the bases and hope for the best. I have a reason for thinking this.

We hear traffic reports on the radio at rush hour every morning and they can be very useful, especially if there is an obstruction like a traffic accident or road works causing delays. It helps drivers when they get a warning and that’s a good thing.

But regular listeners to the traffic reports will notice that they feature the same problem areas every day, which is understandable. All cities have their bottle necks at rush hour, so it stands to reason that these will be mentioned often.

The M50 in Dublin, for instance, is clogged up so often that some call it the biggest car park in Europe. The Headford Road in Galway is another spot I often hear mentioned and the Dunkaethal Interchange and the Lower Glanmire Road are regulars too.

In my previous life, it was normal to get calls at the garda station from local radio stations in the mornings, inquiring about the traffic situation. When I had the time, I checked the CCTV cameras across the city, or I asked the guys on patrol to give me a clear picture of the traffic flow and I passed this information on.

But there were also times when I didn’t have the time. On those occasions, I just repeated the same information that I had I given on previous days based on my knowledge of the usual hot spots. On the law of averages, there was a good chance that I was going to be right. At least some of the time.

Which brings me back to the local weather forecasts. Maybe there are guys in these radio stations who are too busy to check the weather, so sometimes they just give a decent guess at the forecast and if they’re wrong, there’s no big deal and we put it down to an unexpected change in the wind.

I’m only guessing of course.