A look at some of the highlights from the 2019 Cork Midsummer Festival.

Theatre for One at Cork Midsummer Festival offers an enjoyable new experience, writes Des O'Driscoll.

With the publication this week of the fifth interim report of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation, the disturbing spectre of the dead who were confined in those institutions of shame and segregation continues to haunt us.

So that’s Friday nearly wrapped up. Here’s some of the stories we published on irishexaminer.com today which we hope will help you make sense of it all this evening.

UN rapporteur: Mother and baby homes probe ‘not broad enough’

NUI Galway has hosted a public event with members from the Tuam Home Survivors Network and featuring a range of speakers, including historian Catherine Corless, Dr Sarah-Anne Buckley of the Department of History, NUI Galway, and Irish Examiner reporter Conall Ó Fátharta.

Shame was the base and the root of the Church’s power. But not their shame... but of their victims, writes Fergus Finlay

Today and tomorrow, survivors of the Magdalene Laundries will be feted in the Mansion House and welcomed to Áras an Uachtaráin, says Charlie Flanagan.

Calls have been made for the resignation of HSE director general Tony O’Brien in the wake of the CervicalCheck scandal or for the Taoiseach to remove him.

It’s been five years since the Government apologised to the women of the Magdalene Laundries but it has yet to implement restorative justice, writes Maeve O’Rourke

A US academic wrote to the UN in 2013 claiming material relating to the Magdalene Laundries called parts of the McAleese report “into question on a number of rather serious fronts”.

An academic who had access to one diocesan archive reports accounts of physical abuse and medical neglect and argues that the files are not accurately reflected in the McAleese Report into the Laundries, writes Conall Ó Fátharta.

Survivors of Magdalene laundries, and their relatives, have relived the horrors of rape, abuse and lost lives as they renewed calls for a memorial and full redress.

The McAleese inquiry into Magdalene laundries was informed in 2012 about “disturbing” infant death rates in excess of 50% at the Tuam Mother and Baby Home.

Here's your morning bulletin.

Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald and her department have been accused of misleading the UN by claiming the McAleese report made “no finding” in relation to State liability with regard to Magdalene Laundries.

The Tuam mother and baby home should not be treated as an individual scandal, but as part of a national trafficking network that commodified people, says Conall Ó Fátharta.

Concerns that death records were falsified in Bessborough Mother and Baby Home so children could “be brokered in clandestine adoption arrangements” at home and abroad were raised in an internal HSE report in 2012.

The Government is under mounting pressure to include Magdalene laundries, private adoption agencies and a myriad of related institutions in the upcoming mother and baby home inquiry.

Two recent incidents are instructive into how the memory of some lives are valued more than others in this country.

The treatment of asylum seekers in Direct Provision centres will be compared to the Magdalene laundries in years to come, Equalities Minister Aodhán Ó Ríordáin has said.

The Government was “conscious of the danger” of offering redress for Magdalene survivors just months before setting up the McAleese inquiry to investigate the issue.

Magdalene women are being forced accept smaller compensation payments because the State believes the religious orders over survivors regarding how long they spent in the laundries.

Proper independent investigations of crimes against women and their babies together with full compensation and the trial of perpetrators is now urgent, the State has been told.

Infant mortality rates, burial practices and the issue of forced labour in institutions need to be included in the forthcoming mother-and-baby home inquiry, the Government has been told.

Welcome to your Monday morning briefing. Let us ensure you’re up to speed on what’s happening and are prepared for the day ahead.

WHEN well-known scandals, like that of the mother-and-baby homes or the Magdalene Laundries, finally hit the public consciousness — we often hear a common refrain: "Oh it was a different time."

Given that the Government has committed to consulting a wide range of opinion regarding the scope of the Commission of Investigation into mother-and-baby homes, I would like to issue a plea that the foremost issue to be decided should be which institutions are included.

Adoption, children’s and human rights organisations have welcomed the decision by the Department of Children to set up a statutory commission to investigate practices, deaths, illegal adoptions and vaccine trials at the country’s mother-and-baby homes.

Cork teenager Joanne O’Riordan, who celebrates her 18th birthday today, was almost dizzy with excitement when she met President Michael D Higgins at Áras an Uachtaráin yesterday.

A campaign aimed at shaming the Irish State into opening an estimated 60,000 adoption files is gathering pace on the back of Oscar-nominated film Philomena.

The inspiration behind the Oscar-tipped film Philomena has defended it against a critic who labelled it anti-Catholic and “90 minutes of organised hate”.

ON Nov 27 I got a very sad phonecall from Bernadette Fahy and a text from Paddy Doyle.Both Bernadette and Paddy are amazing people who are survivors of institutional abuse.

A number of Magdalene survivors have been offered state compensation payments reflecting much shorter lengths of stay than the women endured.

Justice Minister Alan Shatter has admitted his department will need to be bailed out to the tune of €32m this year to fund the pay and pensions of gardaí as well as compensation for the women of the Magdalene Laundries.

The Government has been told that its refusal to commission an independent investigation into the treatment of women in Magdalene Laundries is an issue that is “not going to go away”.

Magdalene Laundry survivors plan to protest outside the provincial headquarters of a religious order which has refused to contribute to the State’s redress scheme.

Questions surround a section of the McAleese Report which states it asked the Ryan Commission to contact seven women mentioned in the Ryan Report who were in Magdalene Laundries.

The Government has ruled out legal action to force religious orders to contribute to a compensation fund for survivors of the Magdalene Laundries.

After two years in power, the Government can be proud of some achievements. But there are fears, particularly of a summer of discontent, writes political reporter Juno McEnroe

The stark gender imbalance in cabinet means many ministers have little direct knowledge of policy issues they are discussing, the Cabinet’s most senior female minister has suggested.

The deceased victims of the Magdalene Laundries will be remembered today at a special ceremony at Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin.

The Irish public speak of being shocked by the report on the Magdalene Laundries, but everybody knew what was going on, writes Frances Finnegan