Women have made a difference

Writer and Irish Examiner book reviewer, Mary Leland, wrote an informative article for a Sunday newspaper recently, reflecting on the media reports about the mother-and-baby home in Tuam, Co Galway.

The home closed in 1961 and this year’s discovery of approximately 800 death certificates from there was swiftly followed by the Government announcing an enquiry.

Leland reminded us of how some women, among them Mary Robinson and Catherine McGuinness and Nuala Fennell, who was the minister of state for women’s affairs in Fine Gael Taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald’s government in the 1980s, improved Irish society.