While walking through the city centre, my mind kept turning back to Amira Haas, the well-known Israeli journalist who had the courage to do what no other Israeli journalist would do and that was to live and report from among the people of the Gaza strip.

She described how a doctor in Gaza could not get permission to accompany his terminally ill mother to hospital; she died alone. She had many sad stories which she wrote about in the newspaper Ha'aretz.

Haas's mother survived the concentration camp in BergenBelsen but what her mother taught her was how ordinary German people would "just look from the side."

It is now time for the Irish government to stop looking from the side and implement a boycott of all Israeli goods until such time that the Palestinians are given proper freedom in a democratic society Paul Doran, Monastery Walk, Clondalkin, Dublin 22.

Leaving Cert student won't take criticism sitting down From Ciara Fagan After reading Diarmuid Doyle's article (Comment, 10 June) I felt compelled to write.

I'm sitting my Leaving Cert at the moment and feel the need to defend students to a certain degree.

You say you agree with Mr O'Grady in his view that, to the average Leaving Cert student "learning consists of memorising material given to them in a pre-packaged form" and I absolutely agree. After a certain amount of time, the material we are given becomes merely another item on the list which must be learned off by heart to be regurgitated during an exam in order to gain the necessary marks. It gets to the stage where you no longer realise the actual meaning to the material you are trying to rhyme off in your head.

My point is that this is not the fault of the student.

When one is trying to learn mountains of material for seven subjects or more, everything loses its meaning.

Everything is so focused on the exams that you lose sight of the real importance. The amount of useless material on some courses is unbelieveable.

Take Honours Irish for example, 13 poems, four prose pieces, a drama. . . and that's just paper two. I am a fan of the Irish language but can you blame the average student for getting so caught up in this world of pressure that the real world seems like a distant place?

Some of the material is so irrelevant to everyday life, that you begin to forget what real life is like. This, of course, is not the case with every subject. In geography we covered the exploitation of workers, something that, when it was covered in this newspaper I was able to say, 'yes I do remember learning about this'. Something which teaches you about the world beyond text books and exam papers. Exam technique is sometimes more important than the material itself.

The unfortunate reality is that exams have become memory tests more than anything else; you don't have to understand it to memorise it and write down on the day.

I admit I don't know where Thurles is, but that is because knowing that won't help me to get the points I need to go to college. Do you see where I'm coming from? Next week, when I finish the Leaving Cert, I will wake up and realise that there actually is a big bad world out there that doesn't revolve around the dreaded points system.

I do agree that students are coming out with a lack of knowledge about today's world because we have spent the year learning how to apply Pythagoras's theorem to a right angled triangle. It is not because they are marking the papers easily that students are appearing like this, it's because of the course we have been set.

That's my experience.

I hope I made good use of my commas and grammar.

Ciara Fagan ciara_fagan@yahoo. co. uk

Fianna's last battle in Tara was in 284 AD From Ciaran Mac Samhran

I WRITE to congratulate you on Isabel Hayes's superb article on the Tara-Skryne Valley, the M3 and the TaraWatch campaign last Sunday. However, there was one small error which I would appreciate if you were to correct.

The article states that the Fianna's last battle was in the valley (the Gowra valley/Battle of the Gabhra) in 3500 BC.

This, I believe, was a mix-up with the potential earliest date of the discovered henge.

The Fianna's last battle in the valley actually occurred in 284 AD, according to the highly respected and utilised Annals of the Four Masters.

It is to be noted that these records do not contain any exaggerated accounts of heroes and feats but rather record factual genealogies, the dates of birth and death of the 142 kings who were based at Tara and the dates of important, historyaffecting battles.

Ciaran Mac Samhran, Kilmainham, Dublin 8.

Silent treatment from Irish Rail infuriating From Michael Lynch

I CAN accept that there will occasionally, like this morning, be unavoidable disruption to Dart services caused by factors outside the control of Irish Rail. I cannot accept the total disregard to customer services shown by the company once these disruptions happen.

Having been delayed (in silence) for several minutes on the approach to Connolly, yet again I and my fellow passengers were left to stew in ignorance in our carriages once we arrived at the platform. I subsequently discovered, having eventually disembarked the train, that there were intermittent mumblings from the platform speakers about some vehicle hitting something near Lansdowne Road and some trains were delayed.

These were barely audible on the platform and they were totally inaudible from the carriages.

People would be far more tolerant of these disruptions if they were given sufficient information about them, what is being done to resolve it and some idea of how long it will take. Only then can people make informed decisions about alternatives. I know that if I am going to be delayed for 15 minutes or more at Connolly, I can walk as far as Pearse or Tara Street in less time.

Is there some kind of dated union demarcation agreement that prevents the driver of a Dart/train informing the passengers what is going on and for how long, or is it just that neither staff nor management could be bothered with this customer service nonsense?

Michael Lynch, Evora Park, Howth, Co Dublin.

Celtic Tiger needs its rotten teeth pulled From J Woods

THE excitement has all but disappeared since the elections and everyone is beginning to settle into the same old routine' or 'rut', however you want to describe it. For some, it was like deciding to repaint your jaded or rather faded sitting room and after a bit of thought, rather than opting for a bright new colour, instead you take the easy way out and opt for the same tired old colour. So there you have it, a mirror image of the status quo that we find ourselves in now for the next five years.

Welcome to the return of rogues gallery' once again' the Mercs' the SUVs, not forgetting all the wakes and the funerals that you must be seen at . . . it explains one thing' people do not seem too eager to embrace change just in case, in their mind, it might upset the Celtic Tiger. This fear was manipulated very well by Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen, the finance guru. In the months leading up to the election, Brian's pockets were deep . . . there seemed to be no shortage of money or promises and people bought into it hook, line and sinker' thinking good times never end.

But end they will when it becomes apparent that the Celtic Tiger is suffering from a very bad dose of toothache . . . Bertie and Co being the toothache. An extraction was required but everyone knew it wasn't going to be easy . . . only now, on reflection' people will think that maybe if we had been a bit more adventurous when marking our ballot papers' we would not have to witness the smug look on the faces of TDs who were re-elected' not for what they did but because they were nice people . . . ie smile' shake your hand' wave when boarding at Carrick Finn for a flight to Dublin' visit the hospital wards, pretend to be on the mobile if they did not want to listen to your woes, while checking the latest value of their shares.

J Woods, Gort an choirce, Co Dun na nGall.