Irish Examiner view: Put Joanne Hayes’ story on curriculum

Joanne Hayes with her sister Kathleen (left) arriving for the hearing at the Kerry Babies Tribunal in 1985. File photo: Eamonn Farrell/RollingNews.ie

One of the responses from the far side of the Irish Sea to The Hunger: The Story of the Irish Famine, the wonderful TV documentary broadcast in recent weeks, is that “we didn’t know, the story we were taught was very different”. 

That reaction needles because it came from senior British academics who imagine they had a rounded education. But if something is not offered in school, it can only be found by the most curious and determined.