Letters to the Editor: Unintended effects of the move towards a cashless society
Benny McCabe writes that the now ubiquitous use of card over cash has taken away addicts' traditional method of passive begging. Picture: iStock
Recent events in Cork city centre have prompted voices of concern from such diverse quarters as Tánaiste Micheál Martin to bodies representing overseas students, adding to the already stated concerns of all business associations, charity groups, tourist bodies, concerned private citizens, and indeed the gardaí, who are pleading for resources.
One may wonder why, since the concern is undoubtedly unanimous, that there is such a sense of inertia and growing despondency and a realisation that in the absence of leadership things may get worse before they get better.
All this in a city of sparkling potential. Are we seriously going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?
One cannot help but wonder would things be different if we had an elected mayor?
However, in the meantime, as someone who works and lives in the city centre, let me offer up the following observation: In my opinion, the city is no better or worse than it’s ever been, except for the advent of hitherto unknown aggressive and intimidating begging. What we are seeing is unprecedented, and Cork is not alone in this.
The simple answer as to why is explained by the now ubiquitous use of card over cash. Many addicts simply can’t access cash through the traditional method of passive begging and are forced into desperate measures that result in aggressive and intimidating interactions with residents, shoppers, and visitors.
This is one of the many unintended consequences of a cashless society and the most vulnerable people find themselves in a living hell, now that the comfort blanket of fast cash has been removed to them.
I’m minded to think perhaps that this same comfort blanket has enabled more fortunate citizens to allow addicts and their deep personal traumas to be swept under the carpet for many years, and perhaps leadership across all sectors just did not see it coming.
Hey presto, the cash is gone and here it is in all its ugliness.
We simply now must start policing the cashless transition on many levels as we navigate what a seismic civilisational change, which is now manifesting as what we see on the streets of our city.
It is never a good idea to unintentionally deprive an addict of the means to acquire a fix and actually expect the city to run smoothly.
I estimate that this transition requires at the very least double the amount of gardaí in the city centre.
Those of you who are fans of the Nordic countries may mutter that they have been virtually cashless for years and have no such issues on their streets, but they have the required number of police necessary and have had had longer to plan, resource, and act upon the challenges. It is, to be fair, an “all of a sudden” situation here.
If you feel in any doubt about this, may I remind you of the surge in aggravated burglaries, which are now commonplace.
The cost of this unique situation has been borne by private businesses in the form of security costs.
It’s far from a bald statement to say that, today, security costs are often higher than rent, but the costs in terms of the degradation of our social fabric will eclipse that many times, in terms of violence, unnecessary deaths, loss of amenities, loss of foreign investment, and indeed loss of foreign students — some of whom have been stabbed in the neck, lassoed on our main street — whose contribution to the city we should cherish.
I urge all leaders — Government, council, and elsewhere — to consider the very real lived experience of those on the margins who are having to resort to desperation in the absence of cash, to acknowledge that cashless is creating this spiral and to consider new ways to help these people.
In the meantime, if you respect our city, then resource the gardaí to keep all its citizens safe.
This would be infinitely cheaper now, compared to what will inevitably develop into a form a policing that will necessarily be tougher in the future, and which will polarise the public.
Times are indeed changing, and it’s on your watch.
I’m of the opinion that the reaction to the Dáil bicycle shed has been a bit over the top.
With the bicycle becoming the most important means of personal transport from now until doomsday, an excessive, preposterous and outrageous marker is surely worth laying down, so that the oncoming generations clearly understand that bikes need sheds, unlike cars, which are weather immune.
This is reasonable, isn’t it, whatever the cost?
As one on public record calling for the ban on disposable vapes, I welcome the decision taken by the health minister to introduce legislation making it illegal to sell them.
Considering the upcoming general election, the reality is that the proposed legislation will not be enacted by the present government, but by the members of the next administration
As I advocated in the past, the ban will have positive implications, both for public health and the environment.
The health of our children will be the real winner, considering the number of adolescents experimenting with these vapes.
On the environmental front, while on regular litter patrol, I experience at first hand the amount of litter generated from disposable vapes, which is particularly relevant in areas frequented by school children.
This is why the abolition of disposable vapes is a win-win situation.
When is a military alliance not a military alliance? When it’s a battlegroup, they tell us.
The Government insists that Defence Forces’ membership of the EU’s Nordic Battlegroup does not contravene neutrality — at least, not under the Government’s pared-down definition of neutrality, which means nothing more than Ireland not being part of an EU mutual defence pact and not being in Nato.
While the Government continues to gaslight us, Ireland’s membership of the Nordic Battlegroup just got real. At a battlegroup exercise in Gormanstown army camp on Wednesday, Lt Colonel Donal Burke, who heads the Defence Forces contingent in the battlegroup, informed reporters present that “the operation of European foreign policy is the battlegroup”. And next year, he says, “there’s a higher likelihood that we will deploy”.
For what purpose? According to Lt Colonel Burke, the battlegroup is preparing for “all spectrum” of “crisis-management” events within a 6,000km radius of Brussels (encompassing north and central Africa). EU battlegroups are now part of the EU’s Rapid Deployment Capacity, a key component of the EU’s Strategic Compass, he says. If we consult the Strategic Compass (2022) — part threat assessment, part strategy — we learn that the EU intends to “further develop full spectrum forces … complementary to Nato, which remains the foundation of collective defence for its members”.
This sounds very much like an EU army in the making. A commentator in the authoritative Foreign Affairs magazine suggested that, “under the bland label of the Framework Nations Concept [devised by Nato], Germany has been at work on something far more ambitious — the creation of what is essentially a Bundeswehr-led network of European miniarmies”.
Not an EU army as such, then, but not unlike one, and subordinate to Nato.
Given the above, how can the Government continue to insist that Ireland is not a member of a military alliance? Or perhaps the question should be: How does the Government keep a straight face when it repeats time and time again that Irish neutrality is not in doubt, despite all the evidence to the contrary?
The Israeli airstrike on the overcrowded, tented ‘designated humanitarian zone’ of al-Mawasi near Khan Younis a few days ago ranks as one of the worst war crimes in Israel’s relentless genocidal onslaught on Gaza.
According to the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, three US-made MK84 2,000lb (907kg) bombs with a total ordnance power of 6,000lb were dropped as civilians slept, eviscerating tents and occupants, burying and scattering whole families and body parts, and making 9m-deep craters in the sand.
In comparison, the bomb that devastated the centre of Omagh killing 29 people in August 1998 was 500lb in strength.
Almost the entire 2.3m population of Gaza has been forcefully displaced, many as much as 10 times, and they now occupy an area one-tenth the size of Gaza — or one 20th the size of Co Louth — trying to survive in overcrowded, makeshift tents that can be bombed at will by Israel with little more than a whimper from the so-called international community.
Given recent revelations here in Ireland it is not unreasonable to speculate that the US-made MK84 bombs used in this undoubted war crime could have passed through Irish airspace or even stopped over at Shannon Airport, thus making Irish citizens complicit.
One wonders how many more such bombs need to fall on displaced and desperate Gazan civilians before Taoiseach Simon Harris and Tánaiste Micheál Martin impose diplomatic and economic sanctions on the rogue state of Israel and finally close Shannon Airport to the US military.
The people of Gaza deserve more than meaningless whimpers.
