Was independence worth the suffering?

AFTER the reports on residential institutional abuse in the diocese of Ferns and now Dublin, one can only conclude that 80 years of church rule was a nightmare compared with the 800 years of British rule which preceded it.

Many Irish nationalists must now be wondering whether independence was worth the suffering it caused to so many Irish children.

These reports prove beyond doubt that the church is morally unfit to be the patron of any Irish school. It is morally obscene to allow a church with a proven track record of child abuse to control the moral education of children.