Irish Examiner view: Redress options for illegal adoptions diminish as time goes on

For the majority of this relatively young Republic’s history coming to terms with our past usually meant rejecting if not abhorring all things British. 

That process was embraced with fervor and went to extraordinary degrees to establish a cultural identity inventing, where necessary, idioms intended as evidence of Gaelic purity. Formal Irish dancing was one of the art forms created as much to differentiate as to inspire.

In recent decades, coming to terms with our past has come to mean something very different. 

We have had to acknowledge the horrors inflicted on the vulnerable and weak, particularly on unmarried, pregnant girls or women and their children in our name. That continues today.

The latest episode involves the review of illegal adoptions in the State that has recommended not holding a full-scale inquiry. 

This advice was offered despite suggestions that there may be thousands of suspicious adoptions. That advice was to be considered by the Cabinet yesterday.

This has marked many lives in ways that no one outside of the experience might completely appreciate. 

Every day that passes the options for redress or even the comfort of heartfelt understanding diminish. 

The present, as it always does, crowds out the past. How to bridge that gap is, increasingly, a real challenge for this society. 

That challenge must be addressed honestly if we are to move on and become the caring, decent society we like to imagine we are already.