Madam, - Fintan O'Toole is quite correct in his assertion that future disasters can be prevented right now (Opinion, January 4th). Some months ago, Tom Arnold of Concern made the same point on the same page of your newspaper when he called for a development partnership between Ireland and Ethiopia.
It is high time that the developed world took this approach with the developing world. The extraordinary generosity and compassion now being shown by the public demonstrates our willingness to stand by those in dire need. Our Government must now, on our behalf, meet its development aid promise to the UN.
We must now adopt a policy of building fire-breaks and not just pursue one of putting out forest fires. Too many people live just one crop failure, one tsunami or one despot away from disaster. It is time to plan, with them, for their future development. They deserve it and our humanity demands it. - Yours, etc.,
JOHN NELIGAN, Castlebyrne Park, Blackrock, Co Dublin.
Madam, - Pasty McGarry's reflections in your edition of January 3rd were certainly a cry from the heart in the face of the heart-rending scenes of devastation in coastal villages around the Indian Ocean.
However, I think it is strange that the Religious Affairs Correspondent of your newspaper should misrepresent the teachings of both Christianity and Judaism. In the final paragraph, he suggests that atheism is the only adequate response to this tragedy. Most Christians do not believe that a wrathful God allowed His son to be crucified to appease his own anger. Nor is it fair to caricature the God of the Old Testament as "full of wrath and rage". Isaiah or Hosea and the Psalms have a very different view. Many of the issues surrounding suffering are teased out in one of the literary masterpieces of the scriptures - the book of Job.
On St Stephen's Day the Indian tectonic plate, which was sliding below the Burmese plate, snapped upwards with extraordinary force causing an earthquake. This in turn triggered the tsunami which brought enormous destruction and loss of life. The movement of tectonic plates which causes earthquakes and volcanoes is a completely natural process. If they didn't exist our earth would be lifeless like Mars. There would be no flowers, birds or human friendship. It is hardly fair to blame God for natural processes which bring forth such beauty and fruitfulness and yet, necessarily, have a terrifying dimension to them.
Humans cannot stop tectonic plates moving but, as we learn more and more about how the earth functions, we can begin to live in greater harmony with the Earth's processes. For example, in India communities which had the traditional defences of mangrove forests and living corals suffered much less damage than areas where the mangroves have been ripped out and replaced with shrimp farms. Early warning systems would have saved the lives of tens of thousands of people.
As a Columban missionary I lived through the terrifying earthquake in Mindanao in 1976 and saw the devastation which the subsequent tsunami wreaked on the lives of 20,000 people. I also saw how Christian communities responded with such great generosity to the plight of those who had lost loved ones and their livelihood.
The events of St Stephen's Day in Asia do challenge our faith. They should help us to abandon any vestiges of the deus ex machina god who would suspend the laws of nature and intervene when humans make a mess of things. People of faith do not have all the answers in the face of the mystery of life, suffering, and God, but we shouldn't be stampeded by the understandable anguish of your Religious Affairs correspondent into abandoning the vision of a loving and compassionate God revealed in the face of the Christ child. - Yours, etc.,
Father SEÁN McDONAGH, St Columban's, Dalgan Park, Co. Meath.
Madam, - Patsy McGarry asks where God is in the tsunami tragedy. I suspect wherever He was when 65 million perished in the second World War, wherever He is while 2 million children die annually and further millions perish prematurely from genocide, murder, famine, disease, suicide, terrorism, accidents, earthquakes, AIDS and floods. This, paradoxically, strengthens the disbelief of the unbeliever.
To believers, this life is a valley of tears, a transient moment in eternity. Their faith gives them hope on earth ("Thy will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven") and in the future ("Thy kingdom come"), with very few expectations ("Give us this day our daily bread").
My late mother used to recount a conversation she had with a late Jesuit friend of hers, somewhat along the lines of:
She: What if there is no truth in our beliefs?
He: You think you've been had?
Sackcloth and ashes are not a necessity. And then there's the odd joke: How do you make God laugh? Tell Him your plans for the future.
Mr McGarry is in good company berating God: many of the saints did likewise. - Yours, etc.,
PHIL MOONEY, Delgany, Co Wicklow.
Madam, - With regard to the difficulty of warning vast numbers of people in coastal areas of an approaching tsunami, and giving them time to flee inland or to board boats to get far enough offshore, may I suggest a simple solution that may be worth consideration?
We are all familiar with vapour trails from jet aircraft flying at high altitudes, but purpose-made coloured vapour trails at a much lower altitude are well known at air displays. Would it be possible to link the tsunami early warning system to air-bases strategically located close to vulnerable coastlines? Aircraft containing the required diesel fuel and dye could then be scrambled within a few minutes to leave red trails in the sky as a warning. Beating the speed of the wave with a simple, visual signal would appear to be the best way of reaching hundreds of thousands of people in a short time. - Yours, etc.
RODNEY STAFFORD, Ballyross, Glencree, Co Wicklow.
Madam, - Liam Tuffy (January 5th) refers to the "unseemly competition between donor countries". A bit of this type of unseemly competition within the corporate private sector wouldn't go amiss. Surely it is reasonable to expect the corporations sector to contribute just as national governments, NGOs and private individuals. If the top 50 Irish plcs contributed just one per cent of their most recent profits before tax, more than €50 million would go where it is most needed.
Appropriately signalled, share prices would remain unaffected, companies could write the expense off against tax, and corporate social reports would at last have something of substance to record. - Yours, etc.,
BARRY SMITH, The Tramyard, Inchicore, Dublin 8.