It Occurs to Me: On yer bike!

Sixty or 70 years ago, it was no surprise for my father and his Garda colleagues to get a ‘lift’ occasionally from a local driver, in the event that the oul bicycle wouldn’t get them to Downings or further afield in the case of an emergency.

Roll on to 2026 and I thought I was hearing things when Galway-Roscommon TD Martin Daly told the Public Accounts Committee (in front of Garda Commissioner Justin Kelly) that local Ballygar Garda, Pat Regan, had no patrol car assigned to his station and had to use another station’s vehicle.

It turns out that Garda Regan has a big area to cover in north and east Galway and has to travel 15km to Mountbellew to collect an electric car. It appears that journey alone burns up a lot of the vehicle’s battery life.

Poor Pat had to attend a scene in Clonbern, 23km from his Ballygar station, but was was forced to pull over with 5km remaining and thumb the rest of the way (the only other alternative would have seen him driving to Clonbern but being unable to return to the station.) It’s like a scene from Father (Garda?) Ted or Fawlty Towers, but far from funny.

Let’s remind ourselves that County Donegal received three newly attested Gardaí out of 206 graduates nationally in the July 2026 allocation, with two assigned to Letterkenny and one assigned to Buncrana. Galway was allocated just four gardaí from the last three attestations from the Garda College, which saw more than 700 new recruits distributed to other districts around the country.

Fianna Fáil TD for Galway East, Albert Dolan, told Michéal Martin that recent allocations for Galway meant the city and county were getting just one garda for every 64,000 people. He described this as a “huge problem”. “That is not four gardaí for one town in Galway or one small village – that is for the entirety of County Galway, the city, and Connemara. It is a huge area that received only four gardaí.”

In response, the Taoiseach said Mr Dolan had made a “very strong case” for Galway. He noted that Garda numbers had increased, but the commissioner had “concentrated” on “getting big cities done first”. “I will speak to the minister and commissioner in respect of Galway,” he added “He understands the desire of the Government for wide coverage and so forth. [Four out of 700] seems a low number.” Whether it’s Donegal, Galway or other parts of rural Ireland, I have only one bit of advice, Michael…on yer bike! (It’s more reliable than those electric yocks!)

A5: To be or not to be

I’m sure many of you are familiar with the notorious A5, particularly from Derry/Strabane to Aughnacloy.

The campaign to get the road built has been long and tortuous, but at last it seems there is hope that it may be close to getting a proper green light. Recently, the NI Court of Appeal reversed a High Court decision to quash the ambitious road project.

It was first approved back in 2007, but almost twenty years later not a single inch of tarmac has been laid on the road, which would upgrade the dangerous 85km, where more than 50 people have died. Indeed, many campaigners call it the most dangerous road in Ireland.

Some of the bereaved families were in court, and tears mingled with cheers as the appeal judges delivered their decision.

Lady Chief Justice Dame Siobhan Keegan said a “fundamental error” had been made by the High Court judge who quashed the project last year over its ‘compatibility with climate change legislation.’

However, the Alternative A5 Alliance, a mixture of farmers, landowners and environmentalists, opposes the project, and possibly will take further action in an effort to stop it.

Words to the wise

I’m reading Max Hastings’ brilliant book ‘Plunder’ about the Allies' final push through Germany in 1945. He’s a tremendous writer and in the Intro, he says: “We should continue to acknowledge and to commemorate the remarkable debt that we, as their descendants, owe to those who fought for the democracies against the supreme evil of Nazism. But I shall have failed in one of my purposes in this, as in all my books on World War II, if I leave any impression that we should envy their odysseys, such as post-1945 generations have been spared. War is indeed hell, and today’s world would be a less terrible place if such people as Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, together with some of those who dominate the Middle East, and the reckless and ignorant American leaders who indulge them, were to recognise this.”

Livestreaming execution - a new low

According to Amnesty International, at least 17 public executions are known to have been carried out in 2025 – six in Afghanistan and 11 in Iran. Yes, in countries the US loves to condemn as repressive and inhuman, but in the US, Pete Hegseth has decided to livestream the execution of convicted killer Nidal Hasan.

This would amount to torture, according to the UN. “The livestreaming of an execution is tantamount to a public execution and would breach the absolute prohibition of torture,” the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said. In Congress, there had been bipartisan condemnation of this sick plan:

Republican senator Thom Tillis said public executions were what “oppressive dictators” did. In a social media post, he said: “Hasan should face the death penalty, but making his execution public and streaming it? Beyond disgusting. Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America.”

Speaking on CNN, Democratic senator Chris Murphy said: “I mean, that’s disgusting. What, is he mimicking ISIS executions? I mean, I understand that in this country we have the death penalty, but public execution is medieval. It’s frankly one of the things that we abhor about terrorist groups, and the fact that the United States is doing it - I just learned this. That is just absolutely extraordinary, galling. No matter whether you support or oppose the death penalty, public hangings and executions? That’s what America has become? Um, that’s, that’s pretty extraordinary.”

Yes, that’s what America has become…Hegseth, Trump and the rest of this appalling mob have dragged the US closer to the gates of Hell.

Questions for FlyDubai

The recent escapade on a FlyDubai flight seems to be fairly straightforward for the Israeli and US media, but I came across these queries from a qualified pilot elsewhere:

“As a pilot for 20 years, I have questions:

- Where are the cabin crew here?

- Where are the oxygen masks that automatically drop during a rapid emergency descent?

- How did the Capt. manage to open the door while being stabbed?

- Omani pilots were not allowed to fly to Israel; why was he allowed?

- How did the offending pilot get a weapon onboard? (it appears to be the crash axe in the cockpit)

- Why has this happened so close to elections?

- how are passengers walking around while apparently in a nosedive?

- Who else was injured? Nosedives cause significant G-force incidents

- Why are there two perfectly positioned people recording the incident and not helping?

- Why did a plumber take control and not the two pilots on board who would certainly know when an aircraft was in a nosedive?

- Why was the plumber speaking in English to Bibi after the flight?

- Why was he still in his blood-soaked clothes eight hours after the incident?”