Religious orders must take abuse responsibility

I am writing in relation to the point made by religious orders recently in your paper, when they said that accepting a 50:50 share of the Redress Bill would imply they are all to blame for abuse.

Nobody in their right mind would believe that, or believe that every sister or brother was involved. But the orders have to take responsibility.

This negotiation process is just another way of dragging things out and dragging the survivors through the muck.

In terms of the Government, they have to take their fair share too. I know people who went to the Redress Board and there were people who never allowed to go because they had already gone to court.

As a survivor, and I speak for many on this, we want the money thing to be sorted quickly so the religious orders and the Government could go and disappear.

We are not young people any more and it is time we were left alone.

Just hand over this money and let us live in peace.

Don’t be blaming each other and fighting each other. End this once and for all.

John Barrett

The Ballagh

Wexford