Harrowing end to a week of disclosures

FOR generations we have known the Great Famine as the Irish Holocaust. 

Even at this remove it is hard to overstate the horrors inflicted on the Irish poor almost 200 years ago. Contemporary events may not match An Gorta Mór in scale but, in terms of avoidable suffering, they are as horrifying. In a week that the full horrors of the Grace abuse scandal were at last made public, humanity’s timeless capacity for cruelty was again highlighted. That the week was bookended by the confirmation that the remains of a large number of children were found at a former mother-and-baby home in Tuam just confirms that sad reality.

Historians suggest that 796 infants died in Tuam between 1925 and 1961. This is a rate of around one child dying every two weeks for nearly 40 years. It is unknown how many of these are represented in the grim discovery just made public.