Taoiseach offers support, but won’t say sorry

Given that he was cutting such a sorry figure in the Dáil, Enda Kenny’s reluctance to actually apologise seemed even stranger.

In a spectacular misjudgement of the national mood, the Taoiseach came across more as an apologist for the misery Ireland of the past than a leader ready to apologise for the systematic suffering the laundry regime meted out — and the State’s active collusion in the brutality of it all.

Mr Kenny looked decidedly uncomfortable as he stood there reciting dry statistics as if this was a story about numbers, not the individual stories of lifelong damage and harm from being rail-roaded into effective incarceration.