We never met our little cousin who was abused in an orphanage in Australia

BRITISH prime minister Gordon Brown apologised in parliament recently for the deportation of more than 130,000 children from the 1920s to the 1960s, mostly without parental knowledge and consent.

Kevin Rudd apologised last November to the child migrants as prime minister of Australia, one of the receiving nations. The deportations constitute official kidnapping and child trafficking, and a possible diplomatic travesty, as Irish citizens were subjected also to this practice.

The hurt and sorrow which was visited on children and their parents is compounded by the fact that their very existence is still only being discovered by their extended families who now also experience distress not only that such monstrous policy and practice should have existed officially, but more particularly that their hidden relatives suffered so much.