Christine Buckley, an institutional abuse survivor who co-founded the Aislinn foundation, has died.

An Bord Pleanála’s decision to turn down a memorial to victims of institutional abuse, planned for the Garden of Remembrance on Parnell Square in Dublin, represents a slap in the face for those who were treated outrageously by nuns and brothers of religious orders under the unseeing eyes of state agencies.

THERE was no sex in Ireland before television — this famous political quote from the 1960s sums up the mismatch between public debates and people’s private behaviour.

A STATE-FUNDED group for survivors of institutional abuse spent over €80,000 on travel and subsistence, and over €30,000 on office administration over two years.

IT seems the clergy, for all the fantastic work they have done for education in this country, are incapable of learning.

THE Sisters of Mercy have offered to contribute cash and properties worth over €127.5m in compensation to the victims of physical and sexual abuse in former industrial schools run by the order.

SEAN Brady, the head of the Roman Catholic church in Ireland is reported as having said that “Our (sic) children were sent to institutions either for poverty, or for petty larceny, or for simply absence from schools.”

An eerie silence fell over Dublin today as more than 5,000 men, women and children weaved through the city in solidarity with the victims of abuse in church-run institutions.

I HOPE tens of thousands of people march tomorrow week.

THE family of a baby girl who died three days after she was admitted to the notorious Goldenbridge orphanage in Dublin is calling for her exhumation to investigate the cause of death.

I DROVE to Clonmel on Sunday for the finals of an under-nines and under-10s football tournament. It was organised by Clonmel FC and brought together young footballers from the six Munster counties. They (and the rest of us) had a brilliant afternoon and we were made to feel really welcome by the Clonmel team.

VICTIMS of child abuse at industrial schools and other Catholic schools have expressed disgust at the Child Abuse Commission’s failure to provide them with advance copies of an explosive report before its publication on Wednesday.

WE are supposed to be a supportive and caring nation. That’s just humbug.

The Supreme court has turned down an application by a former resident of an industrial School who during the 1960's was raped by her step-grandfather for leave to legally challenge the decision not to award her redress for the attacks.

THE Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse has heard claims that there is an “unbridgeable gulf” between the findings of school inspection reports and the personal experiences of children at former industrial schools run by the Sisters of Mercy.

WE were waiting for the Luas and watching barges float down the Grand Canal when we heard the shouts.

THE nuns who ran one of the country’s most notorious industrial schools have rejected the most serious allegations of abuse against children in their care.

NO records have been found to show the forms of punishment young offenders received for breaching discipline at Daingean reformatory school in Co Offaly, the Child Abuse Commission heard yesterday.

ANYBODY watching Questions and Answers on Monday night would be left in no doubt that the attitude of the public to abuse claims relating to orphanages and industrial schools is changing.

CLAIMS that people who were kept in State institutions as children are lying about being abused so they can get compensation are “deeply hurtful”, a former orphanage resident said yesterday.

Gardaí in Dublin are investigating a shooting incident in the south inner city early this morning.

It was probably inevitable that the pressure on the Government would increase as a result of its inept handling of the Laffoy resignation.

DEAD people identified as child abusers in State institutions can be named publicly, according to the provisional ruling of the investigative arm of the Laffoy Commission.