No excuses can justify our shameful history

One opinion I have seen written since the dreadful Tuam story broke in the media is: That the public must consider the tragedy in the context of the country’s economic and social profile of the time.

Well I say this: No particular time in our history should be an excuse for what happened here.

All our shameful history needed to be brought out in the open: Corporal punishment in our schools; the dreadful Industrial Schools; the Magdalene Laundries; clerical sex abuse; and now this latest report on the remains of 796 babies, who died at a religious-run and state funded home for unmarried mothers in Tuam from 1925 to 1961.