Let’s not repeat attitudes we are quick to condemn

Someone very dear to me was a resident of a Good Shepherd convent from the 1920s until her death over 20 years ago.

I’ve no doubt prior to my knowing her, she had difficult times but in the 15 or so years of her life that I remember she was a happy, well respected and well looked after member of her community within and outside of the convent gates.

She would have found the often-sensationalist and antagonistic public discourse surrounding the experience of women in the Magdalene laundries very difficult.

Enda Kenny’s apology is on behalf of the state, and by default on behalf of its citizens. As every child is regularly told, it’s only an apology if you are not planning to do it again. It’s easy to apologise for something we feel, we as individuals did not do.

But what about what we as individuals and as a society are regularly doing — repeating behaviours and attitudes that we are so quick to condemn. How many of us still look down on certain sectors of society?

How many of us belong to churches or clubs that exclude certain people or feel justified to not live beside certain groups of people. Irish society was cruel to the women who were sent to the Magdalene laundries but if we are truly sorry we will look closer at the kind of society we are shaping right here, right now.

Apologies and recompense from the institutions of state and church are the right of those women whose rights were denied.

Behaviour and attitude change of these same institutions and of every citizen, towards people we continue to exclude is central to a society that looks after everyone’s rights in the here and now.

Dr Celia Keenaghan

Pine Grove

Grange

Co Sligo