Justice for Bethany House victims

For how much longer will the Minister for Justice and Defence Alan Shatter continue to obfuscate and filibuster on the issue of those who were incarcerated in the Protestant-run Bethany home?

Despite being the principal facility for single Protestant pregnant women deemed in need of institutional care, Bethany was not considered a State residential institution and therefore the children born there have been excluded from the Residential Institutional Redress Act 2002. The remaining survivors of these institutions do not have time on their side and in many cases do not enjoy good health.

Minister Shatter has recently indicated his intention to address speedily the contentious issue of pardons for Irish soldiers who deserted their posts during the Second World War and enlisted with British forces. Might I remind the minister that unlike those deserters who had a choice on desertion, the children born in the Bethany home did not. Fate decreed their status. They have been innocent victims all their lives.

Mr Shatter also condemned the Irish State for keeping the doors of this state firmly closed to Jewish refugees in the 1930s and 1940s, saying this State utterly lost its moral compass in regard to the Jewish refugee issue.

What about the Irish State’s moral compass to the children of Bethany House? Does Mr Shatter wish to be remembered as the minister for justice who administered justice to those few remaining victims of Bethany House, or one whose actions fell short of his rhetoric?

Tom Cooper

Knocklyon

Dublin 16