Irish Examiner view: Jailing the mentally ill is a living echo of our past horrors

We have been forced, after one Pandora’s box after another burst open, to confront terrible legacies. 

That process is so honed that we try to apportion blame. Could the religious orders running mother and baby homes have left such a horrific record had families not delivered a stream of pregnant young women to their authority? 

The answer is subjective, but there can be no ambiguity over a report published on Tuesday, one that is an echo of the mother-and-baby homes inhumanity. 

But, this time, there are no religious congregations to blame.

This is a secular scandal, entirely of our own making.

The Irish Penal Reform Trust (IPRT) reported that as many as 33 severely mentally ill people were held in a prison at any time last year, because the Central Mental Hospital could not offer the refuge or succour they needed. 

The IPRT warned that incarcerating ill people because there was no alternative is “one of the biggest failures of the State, in terms of caring for the most vulnerable”. 

And that, in this country, is a high bar. 

Our attitude to protecting those with mental health issues is shameful and Victorian. Remember, it is not so long since Kathleen Lynch had to threaten to resign as a junior minister to protect the national mental health budget. 

There may be little enough we can do to right the wrongs of the mother and baby homes, but ensuring that we are not guilty of similar neglect or betrayal is the very minimum.

This intolerable situation must be quickly resolved.