Suzanne Harrington: Are we still a nation that sweeps things under the carpet? 

The site of Bessborough mother and baby home in Blackrock, Cork, where hundreds of children died. Picture: Larry Cummins 

If the brushing of difficulties under the carpet were an Olympic sport, until very recently, Ireland would have won gold, every time. We’d have cleaned up. The traditional Irish solution to an Irish problem was to simply pretend that the problem didn’t exist. Nothing to see here. Let’s talk about the weather instead.

Thankfully, the under-the-carpet sweeping generations have been replaced by generations more inclined to nettle-grab, as we become a bit braver, a bit more forthright, a bit less tolerant of nonsense. However, progress never happens in a straight line.

Two current situations show just how embedded this under-the-carpet-sweeping reflex remains in the DNA of our institutions: the granting of permission by Cork City Council to build apartments on the site of the Bessborough mother and baby home, and the relocation of the Ireland v Israel football match to Serbia.

Although unrelated, both have one thing in common — the metaphorical spinelessness and blind eyes of living adults, and the literal bones of dead children.

Hundreds of children died at Bessborough — 923 in total, and the bodies of 859 are still unrecovered. Instead of creating a sanctuary of remembrance on the site, Cork City Council has decided property developers can instead build 140 apartments on top of the former ‘home’. 

This is a ratio of more than six unrecovered dead children to every one apartment. Property developers can go ahead, says the city council, and cement over Bessborough’s 76 years of horror, providing they engage an osteoarchaeologist and a forensic anthropologist.

Seriously though. Would you want to live there? Build a memorial instead, a peaceful garden of ‘Never Again’ to honour the children who died. And to honour their mothers.

The other dead children are the 20,000 murdered by Israel since 2023. And yet the Football Association of Ireland has, with eye-popping, jaw-dropping levels of under-the-carpet-sweeping, instead of relocating the upcoming Ireland v Israel to never-ever, has decided to hold it in “neutral territory due to operational challenges”. That is, to Serbia, where 30 years ago, they had their own genocide. Israel will feel right at home.

Which prompts the question: Football Association of Ireland, have you lost your mind? Are you seriously willing to compromise the integrity of our players, our reputation, our place in the world — for three points? And before anyone bleats about sports and politics being kept separate — yes, absolutely, but genocide is not politics. It’s not a difference of opinion. It’s not agreeing to disagree.

The very idea that Ireland would have anything whatsoever to do with perpetrators of genocide is incomprehensible — even among the keenest football fans, does anyone actually want this game to go ahead? 

Read the room, FAI. Take a stand, find your spine, stick your neck out. Show the world that some things are more important than kicking a ball. I say this as a fan.

History is watching. In another few years, what will we look back upon? A beautiful garden dedicated to the memory of 923 Irish babies and children, or a block of flats? A proud Irish football team playing it forward, or still seething with resentment at being so compromised?

These things matter. What we do is who we are — and we are no longer a nation that sweeps the bad stuff under the carpet.