The Magdalene report - Response was totally inadequate

Even though we’ve endured report after report telling us how young and vulnerable people were exposed to evil by those entrusted with their care by the State, tacitly if not directly, Tuesday’s Magdalene report inevitably provoked a strong, passionate reaction.

Unfortunately, the ensuing shame and anguish was exacerbated by Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s fumbling, almost amateur reaction. His initial Dáil response, sincere but terribly inadequate, suggested that he had almost been caught by surprise by the findings.

This impression was strengthened yesterday morning when he announced the Government will seek a “clear strategy and a clear plan” to deal with the findings. Did he or his advisors not understand that they should have been able to announce details of such a plan immediately after publication? That they did not, or thought it unnecessary suggests a deficit in strategic thinking that goes some way to explain so much of the failure and despair in our public life; a despair that provoked some Labour backbenchers yesterday to press for an early and far more satisfactory response.

The prevarication, the pathetic stonewalling by every Government figure challenged on the report, is straight out of the Bertie Ahern Handbook of Evasion and Splutter. It seems that less than two years after being elected with an overwhelming mandate for openness this coalition is more comfortable with the practices they were elected to eradicate than the changes they promised to make. This is terribly sad and undermines again the idea of investing hope in our political process, hope that it might be the engine to push this society towards a more honest place, where joined up thinking is the order of the day rather than the exception.

It is possible that Mr Kenny decided to gauge public reaction before he formed his response. Hopefully this is not the case, because if it is, it shows the kind of à la carte leadership and the lack of moral purpose that has done so much to weaken this society.

It must be acknowledged though, that this Government was the first to take significant action on the festering issue. All recent governments knew there was unfinished business but chose to turn away. Incredibly, just two years ago, Brian Cowen’s government told a UN inquiry the State had no role in sending women to those cold, hard workhouses.

How unfortunate it is so that Mr Kenny and his Government had not prepared a better, more humane and credible response, and, on all of our behalf, an abject apology. It is unimaginable that he will not but the self-inflicted damage is damage is already considerable.

It is necessary too to acknowledge that we all, not just Mr Kenny and his Government, have a role to play in making amends. It is just possible that this realisation, this societal failure, is at the root of some of the vitriol of the past 48 hours. The Government represents us all and must speak for us all, but we cannot, even if we’d like to, hide behind it to pretend that we can blame Government — or even the Catholic church — for all the wrongs of the past.