Ruby Eastwood: Why would anyone choose to live in a city as ridiculous as Dublin?

You hear stories about how people survive in this impossibly expensive city. Couples who stay in loveless relationships because they can't afford to separate. Strangers from Facebook groups sleeping in the same room. A bed rented by one person in the day and a different person at night. Tenants
paying their landlords with sex
. Artists squatting illegally in their studios. People sleeping in storage units. These stories are full of human ingenuity and degradation. They're really quite strange when you think about them properly. The strangest part is how common they've become.
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About a year ago, my best friend in
Dublin
moved to
Berlin
, where he says it's still possible to be broke and live well. When he left his damp, windowless room near Connolly Station – which cost just under a thousand euros a month – there were people queuing for the privilege of being next. Now he lives in a sunlit attic for a fraction of the price, and drinks Fritz Colas and Berliner Pilsners on the rooftop. Every so often, during our calls, he tries to convince me to join him. His logic is hard to fault: Dublin is untenable. Unless you have private wealth or can stomach a corporate job, you resign yourself to chronic financial dread – the kind that squats over your life like Fuseli's goblin in the painting.
At least in other expensive cities, such as New York or London, you can escape your overpriced room into a pulsing metropolis, with endless distractions and some of them free. In Dublin, all you can really do is go to the pub, and even that costs too much. The city is very small, and it seems to constrict as the years pass. You can't leave the house without seeing a face you know. In fact, there are no faces you don't know. They approach from all sides. And the rain. The constant rain.
I recognise the truth in this, and it's hard to argue with. Why would anyone choose to live in such a ridiculous city? I don't know if I really understand my own reasons for staying. I suspect they're quite shameful: they have more to do with a romantic or aesthetic impulse than with anything practical.
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I just like Dublin. I like the harsh beaches and the Martello towers. The silvery, rinsed-out light. I like walking through the sprawling industrial wastelands on the city's fringes. I like the canals in spring, all fragrant with weeds and strewn with sunk bicycles. Strangers here seem to want to tell you things – like the old lady who, for no discernible reason, wanted to talk about the time she heard Bob Marley singing Redemption Song at Dalymount Park. You witness things. Once, on Talbot Street, I saw a man with an arm in a cast get into a physical fight with a man on crutches. I like Dublin on the rare occasions when it snows. I like the hot, malty smell from the Guinness factory. I like the Liberties, where you can hear the quiet rush of subterranean rivers, and church bells, and horses' hooves. I like that ugly statue of Oscar Wilde with the pervert's smile. I even like the loud, sentimental music on Grafton Street, and the whiskey-soaked ballads streaming from the pubs in Temple Bar.
The idea of leaving Dublin becomes more, not less, appealing as I become more entrenched here ... we can weather all sorts of adversity, but banal contentment is the real deadener
Mainly, though, I like Dublin because I chose it. The first time I visited, I was 21. I had some half-baked but very attractive notion of what Ireland represented: something to do with resistance, with migration and nostalgia and alcoholism. I had a copy of
Finnegans Wake and I think I got about three pages in on the bus ride into town before falling asleep. When I woke up, I scrambled off and left the book behind. I had oysters for lunch that day and pictured my whole life in the city. It felt just the right size to make mine. I've lived in bigger cities: Barcelona, where I grew up, and London, where I lived before coming here; and smaller, random places: Brighton, Siena. I've spoken to quite a few Dubliners who are desperate to move to other European cities and can't understand my decision to stay. There's a kind of faith involved in choosing a city. You respond to its atmosphere, its pace and texture, the way it opens up to you – or doesn't. Dublin, for all its flaws, felt like it might yield something if I stayed long enough.
The beginning in a new place is always the hardest part: slow, bitty, full of doubts. I didn't know anyone. I'd been accepted into a master's programme but couldn't fund it and had to defer my place by a year. When my sublet ended, I had to return to London for a while because I couldn't find another room. I worked in bars and signed up with a temp agency that sent me on scattershot catering shifts around the city. The jobs were mostly tedious, but they offered a kind of education. I learned how the different bits of the city fit together, like a giant jigsaw. The glassy conference rooms down by the Quays. The Leopardstown racecourse, where West End men come on weekends to get extravagantly drunk. The grand Georgian hotels and restaurants, where they throw out so much good food it makes you want to cry. The methadone clinic at the end of the bus line where you hear the wildest conversations and sometimes get drawn in.
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It occurs to me that the difficulty of establishing yourself in a city confers a special kind of meaning on your relationship to it. Like in a toxic romance, if you can weather the lows, the highs are incredible. Who knows – maybe the expensiveness and impossibility of a place like Dublin, far from being deterrents, actually deepen its appeal, the way we fetishise designer handbags but never their identical fakes. I've always had this wrong-headed idea that the value of something is revealed by the sting of its attendant sacrifice.
Gradually, my life in Dublin took on more solidity. I was lucky enough to receive a university grant. I met people. I signed a lease. I moved in with a friend and we painted all the walls fresh white. She bought velvet floral curtains in pastel colours and hung them in the livingroom. I found a few prints in charity shops. I got a Persian carpet from a lady in Blackrock Market. A friend gave me a desk she no longer needed.
Sometimes the city sends you little signs of progress. The quiet, stoical man in the corner shop at the end of my road has started calling me 'honey', and occasionally smiles. I have a friend's spare keys on my keyring. I know the name of my neighbour's dog. I know which cobbler to go to for the best deal.
Ruby Eastwood
Still, there are days when I fantasise about leaving. It would be nice to buy lunch in a cafe without feeling frivolous. It would be wonderful not to feel like I'm stuck in a recurring nightmare every time rent comes around. Oddly, the idea of leaving Dublin becomes more, not less, appealing as I become more entrenched here. Maybe that's no coincidence. To return to the toxic romance analogy: we can weather all sorts of adversity, but banal contentment is the real deadener.
Recently, I spoke to a friend in London who's moving to Iowa City for a master of fine arts degree. He told me he's spent hours on Google Maps, exploring the place through Street View. The images all seem to have been captured on sunny days – it looks green and beautiful, full of classic American wood-frame houses. He's begun to associate the town with Iowa Dream by Arthur Russell, all melodic guitar lines and soft lyrics. The self he pictured living there was different from the one he knows in London: less anxious, more social, content to spend long afternoons drifting around and hanging out with friends.
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I also indulge in this kind of cartographic dreaming. I explore prospective cities on Street View: Beirut, Paris, Berlin. It's a surreal activity. You pick a spot on the map and drag yourself along, imagining a parallel life. Sometimes, from one click to the next, the sun disappears and rain slicks the tarmac. Figures with blurred faces vanish or are replaced by others in different clothes further down the road. You realise the map is stitched together from footage taken on different days, in different moods.
Another thing my friend hinted at stayed with me: that
emigration
can be indistinguishable from escapism. When I imagine myself in another city, I don't picture myself as I am now, but a physically and intellectually tweaked version. In Paris, I'm gaunt with a perfect bob; I smoke straights and read Lacan for pleasure. In Beirut, I am somehow fluent in Arabic; I drink less; I am sharper and more spiritual. I study ancient manuscripts. In Berlin, I am reunited with my best friend and we live together like Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith before it all fell apart, looking cool and making great art.
The fantasy isn't really about the new city. It's about becoming a new person.
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There's a way of reading this that feels a little bleak. You could say it reflects a kind of ambient self-disgust, or an inability to accept life as it is. A symptom of being stuck in the wheel of samsara: trapped in a cycle of craving and disappointment, forever projecting some improved self just over the horizon, never quite admitting that the old self follows you everywhere. There's truth in that, but it's not the whole story.
There's another, more generous way to see it. Maybe it isn't escapism, but a kind of unconscious recognition that we are always in the process of becoming. Cities aren't just stages on which our lives play out. They are the biggest collaborators. They shape how we speak, how we move, how we think. They alter our trajectories. When you choose to stay in a place, you're submitting to its influence.
To live in a city is to enter into a kind of contract. You agree to spend your time, your energy, and your labour in its service. In return, it promises transformation, but on its own terms. Like the enchanted gift in a fairy tale, the city will change you in ways you can't predict, and not all of them will be kind. The point is you don't get to choose. It's a gamble. Is it one worth taking?
Ruby Eastwood is a writer living in Dublin

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Irish Times

an hour ago

• Irish Times

Letters to the Editor, June 21st: On public service, the cost of living and sunscreen

Sir, – A stream of commentary in the columns of The Irish Times has crystalised a sobering truth, that ' Our administrative and legal procedures simply cannot unblock the logjam in time to prevent serious damage ', as Michael McDowell put it. ('There is a way to break the logjam in infrastructure', June 18th). Before last Christmas, Patrick Honohan, former governor of the Central Bank, wrote in an Irish Times article: 'The issue is not so much what the aims of public policy should be... the problem has been in delivery'; and recently an Irish Times editorial spoke of our 'sluggish' administrative processes. A simple example illustrates the depth of this dysfunction: a friend of mine, an experienced property expert who spent much of his career in the public sector, repeatedly attempted to draw attention to suboptimal performance in a prominent State body (mirroring wider poor performance manifest in the ballooning housing crisis) and to offer solutions. As a last resort, he wrote to Taoiseach Micheál Martin in January and, after several reminders in the meantime, he finally received a reply this week, six months on, saying that his letter had been forwarded to Jack Chambers, Minister for Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitisation. The Office of the Taoiseach publishes a national risk assessment annually which sets out the '24 strategic risks facing the country in the short, medium and long term'. READ MORE Pandemics, war, housing and social cohesion are mentioned, for example, but never mentioned in this annual assessment is the overarching risk, which if not addressed, compounds all other risks, namely, administrative incompetence and inertia. The Civil Service is not up to the job. Just for example, with 15 grades and associated sign-off authorities above the level of Executive Officer, and several more below EO, Civil Service structures are not fit for purpose in this day of digitisation and AI; reasonable public expectations of personal accountability, with consequences, are thwarted when things go wrong, be it in the national children's hospital, nursing homes, the Office of Public Works, policing or the degradation by nitrates of Our Lady's Island lagoon. To achieve progress on his extensive portfolio of responsibilities, radical public service reform has to be front and centre for Mr Chambers. – Yours, etc, EDDIE MOLLOY, Rathgar, Dublin 6. Rent pressure zones Sir, – While most attention has focused on the likely impact of changes to rent pressure zones (RPZs) on future rents, little consideration seems to have been given to their consequences for house prices. Firstly, housing and apartment development land prices will rise on the basis that building rental homes will be perceived as having become more profitable and this will lead to increased house prices, even if other building costs don't also increase. Secondly, as long-term rental yield expectations will have been increased, they will lift the capital value of underlying assets and progressively influence the market for not-for-rent new and second-hand homes. As always, it is not just rental income that's important in property investment but the 'total return' which includes capital appreciation determined by purchase-sale market conditions and timing. Thanks to the RPZ changes, these have suddenly become more favourable for landlords and builders and less so for buyers and renters. – Yours, etc, BRIAN FLANAGAN, Blackrock, Co Dublin. The high cost of living in Ireland Sir, – Your front page article ( 'Ireland second most expensive country in Europe ' June 20th), will come as no surprise to anyone holidaying or on business in mainland Europe this year. We have just returned from Cyprus where a bottle of decent supermarket wine was €5.50 (€10 here), 20 cigarettes were €4.30 (€14.50 here) and a litre of unleaded diesel was €1.32 (€1.74 here in rural Donegal). Against an average monthly rent of ¤2,000 in Ireland, €850 a month could get you a furnished two-bed apartment in Paphos with access to a pool and a five-minute drive from the beach and all shopping amenities. Of course, wages are lower (minimum wage of €6.60 an hour there, €13.50 here) but that's irrelevant if you are working from home for a multinational – your salary is the same wherever you are, or like us, you are on a fixed pension income. Around 76 per cent of Greek Cypriots speak English, all government documents are in both languages, they drive on the left and you can keep in touch with news in English from British Forces radio or the English edition of the Cyprus Mail. Annual sunshine hours are 3,000 against 1,500 in Dublin. After 11 years in Ireland we've had enough and are planning a move. If it wasn't for the cat, we'd be there now. – Yours, etc, KENNETH HARPER, Burtonport, Co Donegal. Sir, – Eurostat's finding that Ireland is the second most expensive country in Europe came as no surprise. Donegal friends of ours recently returned from Venice, and when I asked if it had been expensive, they replied: 'Not really – after living in Ireland, Venice seemed quite reasonable.' When Venice starts to feel like a bargain, something has gone badly wrong. – Yours, etc, ENDA CULLEN, Armagh. Sir, – Your recent reporting on Ireland being the second most expensive country in the EU is a timely reminder of the factors driving up costs for households and businesses. Among these, fuel stands out: not because of global market volatility, but because of Irish taxes. We believe Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe should establish an expert group to review how fuel for transport and home heating is taxed. Its remit should be clear: It should secure fair revenue for the State, support the shift to renewable energy and protect vulnerable consumers from punishing costs. Current policy hits hardest those with no alternative. That's not sustainable – environmentally, economically, or politically. – Yours, etc, KEVIN McPARTLAN, Chief executive, Fuels for Ireland, Dublin 1. Sir, – Your article (' Ireland's grocery prices are still soaring. How can that be? 'June 16th) cites many reasons for the huge grocery price hikes which we've all seen in the past year or so. Aside from geopolitical events, there is one development that I have noticed in all our local supermarkets over the past year: there has been a huge change in the way supermarket food in particular has been displayed. Now acres of plastic doors have been installed for refrigerated and frozen goods. Inside these cabinets every item of food is presented in plastic or aluminium containers and the food is then covered in literally kilometres of plastic wrap. Potatoes, carrots and even onions are in plastic bags, mushrooms, tomatoes and fruit are in plastic trays shrouded in film. Are we all paying for these plastic doors, the food containers, the cling film? I would like to know how much the packaging contributes to the increased costs. We are offered no choice on whether to accept it or not. I would also like to know whether there are any health risks to us from all the plastic. Are we going to be able to recycle all this packaging? I weighed two washed and emptied trays: one plastic (27 grammes), the other aluminium (23 grammes). Our waste company accepts no aluminium trays for recycling, which presents an additional problem, as one aluminium school lunch tray arrives into our house every weekday. I share the outrage of Pricewatch's readers, but it's not just each individual family budget that's being affected. The cost to our climate is going to be heavy: the CO2 generated by manufacture of aluminium and plastic is only one part of it. Washing the items to make them fit for recycling takes energy (which we pay for). More CO2 is then needed to cart the stuff to a central recycling facility, where even more fossil fuel is needed to recycle it. As for the plastic doors, I reckon their lifespan would be 25 years at most, which gets us to 2050. I wonder whether there is any plan to dispose of or repurpose them. It doesn't appear that the supermarkets are taking climate change seriously. – Yours, etc, MARY SIKORA, Rosscarbery, Co Cork. Child poverty is not inevitable Sir, – The latest child poverty monitor from the Children's Rights Alliance is not just a wake-up call, it's a national shame. In one year, more than 45,000 more children in Ireland have been pushed into consistent poverty, bringing the total to nearly 103,000. This is not a statistic. It is a searing indictment of political choices, public apathy, and a system that continues to fail our most vulnerable: our children. Poverty is not inevitable. It's the result of policy decisions that too often favour economic metrics over human dignity. Today, children account for nearly 40 per cent of those in consistent poverty. Thousands go to bed hungry, live in insecure housing, and miss out on the most basic joys of childhood. This, in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. The Government has made welcome commitments, free school books, hot meals, GP access, but these measures, while helpful, are broad strokes. They do not touch the core of the crisis. The housing emergency is pushing nearly 4,800 children into homelessness, and 230,000 more live in material deprivation, families forced to choose between food and heat, rent and clothing. This is not just a policy gap. It is a moral failure. After nearly four decades working in developing countries, I've seen poverty in its harshest forms, from the famine zones of Africa to the slums of Calcutta. I still remember a six-year-old boy abandoned to die in a sewer. He survived, but only just. His story lives with me because poverty robs children of their worth and their future. While the context is different, children in Ireland are being let down in ways that should horrify us. This isn't just about numbers, it's about values. Do we value children only in rhetoric? Or are we willing to invest in their futures? We know what works: targeted child benefit, early intervention, proper housing, and dignified social protection. And yet two years after the ESRI called for a second-tier child benefit, we still wait. Meanwhile, on the world stage, child suffering deepens. In 2024 the UN verified more than 41,000 grave violations against children in conflict zones. More than 4,500 children were killed, many in Gaza, Congo, Ukraine, Ethiopia and beyond. Some 22,495 children endured multiple atrocities, recruited, raped, bombed, starved. It should haunt us. We must stop looking away. Whether in Dublin or Gaza, Galway or Ethiopia, every child matters. Let us be the generation that found its conscience, raised its voice, and acted. – Yours, etc, RONAN SCULLY, Knocknacarra, Galway. Roaming dogs on the beach Sir. – Having visited Seapoint yesterday evening for a swim, I could not believe the number of dogs still roaming freely among swimmers' belongings and in the sea, in spite of signs everywhere saying ' No Dogs'. Also, where we were changing there was a large abandoned dog poo for unaware swimmers to walk into... disgusting. There were many children there yesterday who do not like dogs and I don't think it is fair for them to have to endure this. Where are the dog wardens patrolling this area? They should be there constantly in the summer months. – Yours, etc, EILEEN BANNAN, Letterkenny, Co Donegal. Always wear sunscreen Sir, – As an Australian, now happily resident in Ireland, your cover photo of sunbathers ('Hotting up', June 20th) prompts me to share the hard-earned wisdom of my people: slip, slop, slap. More specifically, slip on a shirt, slop on sunscreen and slap on a hat. There are things to envy about the Australian way of life, skin cancer is not one of them. – Yours, etc, BEN AVELING, Ranelagh, Dublin. Nuclear weapons and disarmament Sir, – How can a country with nuclear weapons insist that another country should not have them? The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is signed up to by 191 countries, including five states that have nuclear arms. This treaty, as well as aiming to prevent the proliferation of nuclear arms, looks to the disarmament of those weapons already in existence. As far as I am aware no such disarmament has taken place since the putting in place of the treaty in the 1970s. Don't those with the power to disarm nuclear weapons not know of the utter devastation caused by the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or of the still evident effects of Chernobyl? No country should have nuclear weapons. The fact that some countries do have them causes others to develop these weapons. Can the double standard be stopped and a serious effort made to comply with the aims of the NPT to stop both proliferation and disarm already existing weapons? The consequences of not doing so are unthinkable. – Yours, etc, MARY FITZGERALD, Terenure, Dublin. EuroMillions dejection Sir, – Unlike Brian Cullen (Letters, June 20th) I had a longer period of excitement as I didn't check my tickets until I heard where the winning ticket was sold. My wish always, if it's not me (we have to live in hope!), is the winner is someone who needs it, remains in good health, takes the best of advice and puts their winnings to good use and gives to worthy causes. Again, unlike Brian, 'who just has to go and buy another ticket', I wonder is it some sort of post big jackpot Lotto dejection/ depression that I did not purchase a EuroMillions ticket in my local Centra this morning as the EuroMillions jackpot is ONLY ¤17 million tonight! – Yours, etc, JOE WALSH, Dublin.

Irish Examiner

an hour ago

• Irish Examiner

Singles Run Club: How a 5km Marina run shows singles a route past the apps

Connection. As human beings, it is fundamental to our existence and yet, in this day and age, more and more people are struggling to forge healthy and meaningful connections. Why? I think we've become accustomed to 'staying in our lane', head buried in our phones, rushing with nowhere to rush to. All distractions from what truly matters. Perhaps if we simply opened our eyes to the world around us, opened ourselves up to new opportunities, and lived in the moment, we would see how, as social animals, we are wired for connection, making relationships crucial to our wellbeing, happiness, and overall survival. Even the simplest of acts, such as smiling at someone walking down the street or saying hello to a stranger on the bus, can make someone's day; which in itself is reflective of how we have become so deprived of connection as a whole, that the smallest of interactions or gestures give us a boost. As a 30-year-old singleton in Cork who has recently gotten her spark back after years of struggling with self-confidence and failed situationships, let me tell you — being present, learning to be comfortable in your skin, and pushing yourself outside your comfort zone is where it's at. And rocking up to a singles run club at the Marina Market earlier this month was just that — completely out of my depth. Not only was it my first singles event but it was also my first time attending a run club — a double whammy for someone who gets anxious about trying new things. But the more I thought about it, I realised — what better way to meet someone like-minded? We've all decided to try something different, we've all hopped out of bed early on a Saturday morning to go for a 5km run, and we're all seeking that all-important connection. Breda Graham at the new park on Cork's Marina. Picture: David Creedon The first of its kind held in Cork, the singles run was hosted by Your Friend, My Friend, a company set up by Dublin-based couple Samantha and Eoin Keating. Think meeting someone naturally, without having to work out whether someone is single or not — that part is done for you, you'll be glad to know. The rules are: those who are single wear black and those who are taken wear colour — a sure way to suss out who in the group you can approach and strike up conversation with. Sixty singles donning their black running outfits showed up to the meeting point at NoSin at the Marina Market, before a sea of black could be seen running down the marina, after first stopping up for a quick warm-up and mingling session at Marina Park. During the warm-up, simple things such as a rock, paper, scissors battle with the person next to you to determine who would be the one to do 10 jumping jacks made everyone comfortable and got the conversation flowing. The run itself was at a nice conversational pace, something a slower runner like myself was very appreciative of. My training sessions for the 10km at this year's Cork City Marathon were a sight for sore eyes, to say the very least. Not the sort of thing that would attract any potential partner. Something that had stopped me from attending these sorts of run club events in the past had been the fear of being too slow but this relaxed run had no expectations attached to it; people ran, jogged, walked — whatever they were comfortable with. After the run, it was back at the market where everyone got a complimentary NoSin smoothie bowl or smoothie. I loved this aspect as it meant people stuck around and mingled. It was the perfect way for people to get to know one another and share contact details and, looking around at everyone sitting at tables together, sharing stories, you would never have guessed that most showed up to the event alone. Members of the new Singles Run Club on their first run on the Marina, Cork. Picture: David Creedon After the event, organisers Sam and Eoin send an email with a link where you have the option to enter a person's name whom you would like to continue to get to know. That person then receives an email with your details and, if they're interested, it's up to them to reach out. This allows you to follow up with someone, if they too are interested, and also gives everyone that added layer of comfort. And that's something that makes Your Friend, My Friend stand out — Sam and Eoin's genuine interest in fostering connections, whether it's forging romantic relationships or nurturing friendships, all while building a vibrant community. Speaking to Sam, it's obvious that she is passionate about people making genuine connections and is in tune with the distractions of day-to-day life, such as social media and dating apps — something she has found people becoming more and more frustrated with. As someone who has tried and failed at dating apps, I share her sentiment. Apps can dehumanise their users as just a profile that is often hidden behind a paywall. 'For some reason, people are OK with ghosting you or cancelling at the last minute, or people just tend to be much more flaky on apps. "But when you meet somebody in person, you immediately connect with them and they're a human being, and you're not going to just ghost them because you've already had that initial connection with them,' she says. 'When people are on apps, they can spend weeks, sometimes, texting and, especially women, we build guys up in our head to be something that they might not be, and then when we meet them, immediately you can feel the vibe and think, 'This isn't my person.' And so it's deflating, because you spend so long doing that kind of dance back and forth. When you meet people in person, you just immediately know.' Michael Nunes and Amy Goggin out on the first Singles Club run on the Marina, Cork. Picture: David Creedon And with the number of people in their 30s with 'still figuring it out' set as the answer to their relationship goal on dating apps, it's no wonder that more and more people are turning to in-person events to meet the right people. Not only does Your Friend, My Friend aim to combat loneliness and forge connections through hosting singles run clubs but also through speed-dating events, singles socials, wine tastings, weekend getaways, and, most recently, a wedding for singles. You know that exciting feeling when you're single at a wedding and you realise the cutie giving you eyes from across the room is also single? Well, imagine that — but everyone in the room is single. The singles wedding party, the first of its kind, was held in collaboration with Fallon & Byrne in Dublin this week, featuring a fake bride and groom, a comedian delivering the best man's speech, a bouquet toss, a magician, a DJ, a feast from Fallon & Byrne, and 120 singles. So, is it time we ditch the apps and go in search of making in-person connections? If you ask me, the popularity of these social clubs and events says it all. Going back to basics by creating authentic, real connections is the way forward for modern-day dating.

Irish Times

6 hours ago

• Irish Times

AG says he cannot help on legal query over Shannon flights that may aid Israel's Gaza war

Attorney General Rossa Fanning has told the Social Democrats that he is not in a position to assist after the party appealed to him to check whether Irish policy on flight inspection at Shannon Airport is consistent with EU customs law. The party's foreign affairs spokeswoman Patricia Stephenson had previously called on the EU anti-fraud watchdog, OLAF, to launch an investigation into the inspection of flights into Shannon which she said may be facilitating Israel's bombardment of Gaza . She also wrote to the Attorney General, along with her party colleague Gary Gannon, asking whether Irish policy is consistent with the State's legal duties under both EU law and the Genocide Convention. In a response, Mr Fanning wrote that while he appreciated the party had written to him 'with the public-spirited concern of conscientious members of the Oireachtas', he was unable to assist as his constitutional role 'does not extend to providing analysis of legal matters to individual members of the Oireachtas'. READ MORE He said that furthermore, 'it would be neither appropriate, nor in accordance with my legal position, for me to act as a conduit in bringing such concerns to the attention of the Government'. [ Ireland seeks 'legal clarity' over Shannon stopover for US deportation flights Opens in new window ] 'As members of the Oireachtas, I trust you will have the opportunity to express to Government directly the concerns you raise in the correspondence to DG TAXUD [Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union] and OLAF.' The Social Democrats have said there is credible evidence that military contractors and private aircraft carrying dual-use goods are moving through Irish airspace and Irish territory en route to Israel. Ms Stephenson has previously said that under EU customs law, Ireland is required to carry out risk-based inspections. 'That means prioritising flights operated by arms brokers or those on known weapons trade routes. That's what the law says - and right now, Ireland isn't following it,' she said. [ New aircraft inspection system planned to prevent illegal transport of weapons through Ireland Opens in new window ] Speaking on Friday after receiving the AG's letter, Ms Stephenson said: 'Given the response of the Attorney-General, it's now important that the Taoiseach clarifies if the Irish State is indeed in breach of EU law in choosing not to inspect planes that are arriving in Shannon and then travelling out of the European Union directly from Ireland. 'Obviously our concern is one of moral failure, regarding Gaza and the weapons travelling through Ireland, but the State can't continue to operate outside of EU Customs and VAT requirements while maintaining this appalling indifference to what is happening in Shannon Airport.'