Time to face the past with courage

MAYA ANGELOU, the American writer who died recently wrote ‘History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived but if faced with courage need not be lived again’.

Yesterday, Judge Yvonne Murphy, who has previously chaired inquiries on clerical sexual abuse was given with the task of facing one of the darkest episodes of Irish history, infant mortality rates in Irish mother and baby homes.

Criticisms from the UN Committee on Torture about the outcomes of previous investigations, specifically those into the Magdalene Laundries and victims of symphysiotomy suggest that these investigations have not faced these controversies with courage. They criticise the lack of statutory powers to compel witnesses and retrieve information by investigating committees.