Letters to the Editor: Mother and baby homes survivors deserve a proper say in redress

Government should create a reparations commission for survivors to ensure fairness

To our Taoiseach Micheál Martin, Minister Roderic O’Gorman and our Irish family: This is call on our Government leaders to create a reparations commission for survivors of mother and baby homes to ensure survivors receive a fair redress decision.

Certain statements in the report produced by the Commission for Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes convinced me that the current plan to grant financial redress decision-making responsibility for survivors solely to a Government interdepartmental group is not good enough.

I feel blessed to live in a country where our political leadership genuinely care for our citizen’s wellbeing. My loving constructive criticism here rests upon this underlying sincere appreciation.

Our Irish Government shared a very welcomed and sincere apology. However, they wavered most of their responsibility to many of our ancestors by stating that responsibility “rests mainly with the fathers of their children and their own immediate families. It was supported by, contributed to, and condoned by, the institutions of the State and the Churches”.

While it is true that we each contribute to the creation of the society we live in, let there be no doubt that the brunt of the responsibility here is with the specific Church congregations whose members directly inflicted the abuse and neglect, and with the State’s members who colluded with the horror. Theirs were the hands that directly violated, and whose eyes were blind to the files and evidence of neglect and abuse.

Some survivors have been denied truth, reconciliation, and reparation for decades. 

I’m persuaded that for reparation to be fair and final on this long-standing issue, the voices of survivors and their advocates need to be central at the redress decision-making table. The commission needs to be chaired by a compassionate leader who has advocated for survivors and fought all along for truth. It needs to have a legal statutory basis and offer timed public report on progress.

It would build on the valuable and vital work already done by dedicated individuals in the Government on restorative recognition and financial redress plans for survivors.

I fully trust the specific congregations who are required to make redress are in very good conscience committed to doing so. We need a fair reparations commission to determine what that will look like for them.

Many of our ancestors did not stand up in solidarity with survivors at the time for a variety of reasons that we can have full understanding of now. In recent years our collective consciousness in Ireland has been waking up out of the oppression and slumber of patriarchal and puritan social conditioning, as well as certain false teachings of religious dogma that were all so influential in creating so much misogyny in our society.

We can now choose to be the generation who hold the Irish Government and Church institutions involved to account to make reparation for having directly inflicted the harm.

Lynda Morrissey

Aghada

Cork

Not all dogs need to be on a leash

I would like to make some comments in response to the notices from Cork City Council that have appeared in the last week on the Marina and surrounding areas advising owners to “please keep dogs on a leash at all times”.

I am a strong advocate and supporter of responsible dog ownership and the right to allow dogs to run free when they are under the “effectual control” of their owners ... which includes dogs staying in relatively close proximity and paying attention / responding to voice commands.

I believe the laws currently in place in Ireland are more than adequate to help control and tackle any concerns or issues that may arise.

I would point out that if somebody has an out-of-control dog that is causing a problem, there are already sufficient rules and regulations that allow the authorities to take action, and also that certain specified dog breeds are under strict leash-control laws.

And so there is no necessity, in my opinion, to impose a blanket rule on all dog owners, good and bad.

A strict leash-only rule for all breeds of dog removes much of the fun of dog-walking, for animals and humans alike.

If dogs are never allowed off the leash they can only have a limited amount of exercise, and many of the more active breeds would suffer from serious
behavioural problems and health issues.

By all means enforce the control of dogs regulations that currently exist. And yes, come down hard on those irresponsible dog owners who don’t pick up after their pets.

But allow responsible dog owners and their well-behaved pets to continue to enjoy life — both on and off the leash.

On the dog fouling issue, irresponsible dog owners are only one part of the issue.

What about the litter louts that discard masks, waste paper, plastic bottles, beer cans, empty glass spirit bottles — the list goes on?

Paul Shanahan

Blackrock

Cork

Forget the banks, join a credit union

The news that Bank of Ireland intends to close down many branches reminds me of a group discussion I took part in many years ago on this subject.

The post office may be able to take up some of the slack, but we concluded that the best thing to do was join a credit union. I believe that this is still the case.

Brendan Casserly

Bishopstown

Cork

Country compliant to draconian diktats

What a compliant race we have become. Dutiful in the extreme, obedient in the face of ongoing, draconian Covid-19 restrictions and hardly a word of dissent.

Where is our capacity to demand answers and accountability from politicians? Why have our media been so acquiescent in their acceptance of Government diktats without reallyasking the hard questions and ensuring, on an ongoing basis, that we get satisfactory answers?

What are these questions?

• What is the rationale behind the magic number of 5km? Is there some scientific basis for this? Why restrict people, particularly urban dwellers, to the handful of civic amenities within their 5km reach? Why force every Cork person into thronging to the Marina, the Lough, Lee Fields, Fitzgerald’s Park? Why not allow them to walk the wonderful leafy country lanes, forests, beaches of the county and spread the crowd out?
• Why ask people not to meet anybody, have any visitors in their homes, restrict funerals, etc, when all the time other people can come into this country via airports and travel where they like, with a vague promise to self-isolate? Where are the checks on these people? Why are there so many delays in introducing hotel quarantine systems when countries like Australia were able to do this months ago?
• Why has the Government the gall to mention UK, South African, and Brazilian variants when they themselves are responsible for allowing people from these very countries to travel freely into this country. Approximately 145,000 people travelled here over the Christmas period. Who checked their whereabouts?
• What about the vaccine programme? If the UK can vaccinate more than 12m people in the last few weeks, why can’t we? Is it because the Government failed to plan properly? Is it because it asked for volunteers for the Be on Call for Ireland programme, got 7,000 volunteers, and used less than 1%?
• Why haven’t primary school teachers been given vaccination priority to enable these schools to open? Having initially claimed that children were “vectors” and denied them visits to their grandparents, the thinking has changed. We are now told that there is very little chance of Covid being spread by children. So prioritise primary teachers and open the schools.

It’s not rocket science.

Pauline Matthews

Blackrock

Cork

Ireland should tell EU to sling its hook

The time was when we Irish came so close to telling the EU to sling its hook, prior to being forced to hold extra referendums until the technocrats got their eventual desired results from us on the Nice and Lisbon treaties.

If there was now a referendum held on whether — like the UK — we should leave the bloc, I have no doubt Éire would opt to get out.

The EU is no longer, if it ever was, a friend to Ireland. We are now just a pawn in the EU’s incompetent games of chance and persistent revenge-seeking against Britain.

We witnessed just a few weeks ago the EU’s disregard for us, north and south, when Ursula Von der Leyen chose our very sovereignty as if it doesn’t exist — when attempting to put one over on Westminster.

Give us that meaningful referendum and see how we would take back control of everything which marks us out as an independent nation.

We are now having to grovel for medicine to keep our people healthy, while the “more important” states like Germany and France merely smirk at our entreaties to them on every level.

Irish MEPs represent the Brussels EU first and foremost, and not Ireland.

Vote early when that happy day arrives, and we get the chance to wave goodbye to the EU juggernaut which has become unbearable and oppressive in its disregard for us.

Robert Sullivan

Bantry

Co Cork