Talk about scandal after scandal changes nothing, let’s have action

IT’S nearly 30 years since Albert Reynolds’s government fell over a controversy around the paedophile, the Norbertine Brendan Smyth. The intervening decades have been marked by one scandal after another, one excoriating report on child abuse after another.

Despite that litany, we treat each new revelation as if it was the first and that it should not have consequences beyond expressions of heartfelt contrition or maybe a commemorative garden to assuage our guilt. That process continues today — the grotesque known-unknown in Tuam and the Grace outrage which looks ever more like an Irish Josef Fritzl nightmare.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny made a contribution to that process when he spoke in the Dáil, saying the Tuam revelations were a cause of shock and shame and pointed to the complicity of all of society. He spoke passionately but in the end, his speech may count for little enough. The record shows it might be unwise to expect equally forceful action.