We should care for all our children

The long awaited apology by Taoiseach Enda Kenny to the victims of the Magdalene Laundries has been understandably welcomed by a society that for more than a decade has revisited the horrors of Irish institutional detainment and abuse.

Report after report saw the revelations of degradation inflicted on innocent children and women met with cries of public outrage. As a society, we consistently demanded action on these reports. On each occasion saying sorry is the least we could have done.

By its definition, an apology is a reactionary measure, an acknowledgement that what we did in the past was wrong. It can imply a wish not to make the same failings again, but in reality it all too often ignores the failings that already exist in today’s society.

Take, for example, the living conditions that exist for foreign nationals seeking asylum in a country that, from the outside, is seen as welcoming and respectful of human rights.

Since its inception in 2000, the State’s system of accommodating asylum seekers has led to overcrowded living arrangements, poverty and child malnutrition.

The report ‘State Sanctioned Child Poverty and Exclusion’, published by the Irish Refugee Council, found that in many cases families are confined to single rooms in teeming asylum centres, while expectant mothers and new babies face malnutrition.

As they wait in limbo for as long as four years or more to have their claims for asylum heard, they are forbidden from working and receive a weekly allowance of just €19.10 per week for an adult, or €9.60 for a child. As of September 2012, 5,098 people lived in asylum centres. One third of these were children.

Meanwhile, those children who are ‘lucky’ enough to be Irish citizens and residents, but face poverty on a daily basis, struggle to be heard or helped. The Children’s Rights Alliance’s ‘Annual Report 2013’ highlights the continuing cuts to child benefit payments and the Back to School Clothing and Footwear Allowance which in many cases has been halved in two years.

The report also highlights the massive gap in conditions and opportunities afforded to Traveller children compared to their settled counterparts.

We, as a nation, must act now to ensure that history does not repeat itself for the sections of our society that feel as powerless and voiceless today, as the Magdalene victims felt for most of the last century.

Michael McHale

Inchicore

Dublin 8