BETWEEN THE COST of fuel, the permanent threat of marine warfare in the Persian Gulf, and now the risk of contagious and deadly viruses causing a month-long state of cabin fever quarantine, it’s been a bad couple of months for the cruise ship industry. 

Without wanting to sound like a conspiracy theorist, and with the heavy caveat that I am whatever the opposite of an expert is when it comes to epidemiology, I do not like the look of this hantavirus thing. 

Granted, my main fear is the name of the thing. Hantavirus. That’s a little too memorable for my taste, a little too snappy. Like they want us to remember it. Like it might be making a reappearance in the coming months. Sort of like a Chekhov’s cruise ship rat virus. 

As of this week, the WHO has reassured us that the risk of hantavirus to the public at large is nothing like that of Covid. Which is fortunate, because I’d been really trying to get this whole ‘Surrealing in the Years Cruise Ship Tour’ off the ground this summer, and I was getting worried that prospective buyers would be hesitant.

But of course, then there are the fuel costs. Irish ferry companies confessed this week that they are monitoring the war in Iran closely as to how it may affect their price structure due to the global shortage of oil. Fortunately, our Taoiseach Micheál Martin has been thinking long and hard about how Ireland can wean itself off the oily teat upon which we’ve become so reliant. Sorry for using the phrase ‘oily teat’. But it’s true!

In the past week, Martin has twice said that Ireland should examine the role that nuclear power could play in our energy future, including even building a nuclear power plant itself.

That’s right, folks. A nuclear power plant for Ireland. Sure, it’s taken........

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