State has failed its children again and again

There is no reason for us to believe that the mother-and-baby homes investigation will change anything, even if the State apologises, writes Susan Lohan

YESTERDAY, on foot of journalist Conall Ó Fátharta’s discovery of the historic mortality rate for ‘illegitimate’ children of 68% children in Cork’s Bessborough mother-and-baby home, my colleague Claire McGettrick asked if the State would ever do right by all those it had failed since it’s inception?

To recap, that includes the tens of thousands of children who had the misfortune of being born into denigrating poverty, whose parents lacked the financial means to clothe, feed, or educate them adequately, and who, as a result, the State sentenced to a childhood in cruel, punitive industrial schools, where sadism and torture were the order of the day.