Minister Roderick O’Gorman has tasked Sheila Nunan with completing “negotiation with religious bodies, on his behalf, in relation to contributions to the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme”.
It remains a scandal that, over a year and half after the Mother and Baby Home Commission of Inquiry completed its report, no survivor has received a cent. The proposed scheme is restrictive, requiring six months residency, excluding time sent out [of the home but] under institutional control. A sensible pathway would have been to permit survivors to apply to a revived Residential Institutions Redress Board (RIRB) scheme. That has not been done for reasons of cost. Mother and baby institution survivors are second class victims.
Importantly, the Church of Ireland is included in negotiations. They will prove difficult, for two reasons.
First: after the M&B Commission report was published, the Church of Ireland disingenuously disassociated itself from the Irish Church Missions (ICM), the Church of Ireland missionary society most closely associated with Bethany Home, the largest Protestant-ethos institution. CofI clergy are ordained into the ICM. In 1964 a Church of Ireland clergyman declared in court, under oath, that Bethany was run by Church of Ireland Social Services.
Whether or not strictly correct, it shows that Bethany was integral to the CofI’s social control of Protestant women. Methodists and Presbyterians also were involved. The Church of Ireland may not, presumably, be disassociating itself to the same extent from Denny House, formerly known as the Church of Ireland Magdalen Home.
Second: no money was paid by Protestant ethos institutions to a previous payments scheme. Survivors of Smyly’s Homes, a ‘Church of Ireland Children’s Home’, who suffered the worst kind of abuse, were included in the previous RIRB compensation scheme. Smyly’s contributed nothing to an associated indemnity fund, which Roman Catholic religious orders funded. That fund was dispensed to Caranua, that further assisted survivors. Roman Catholic money funded the needs of some Protestant-institution abuse-survivors.
Will history repeat itself? Sheila Nunan will have her work cut out.
Niall Meehan
Journalism & Media Faculty
Griffith College, Dublin
Ball throwing is a plague on hurling
In my youth, different county hurling teams were known by various names. Wexford were known as the Yellow Bellies, Kilkenny as the Cats, Tipperary as the Stone Throwers, surely Limerick have more than earned the title of the Ball Throwers.
On a more serious note, modern hurling has been blighted by ball throwing. It is anathema to the exquisite skills of the game. How many All-Irelands would Limerick have won if ‘illegal’ ball throwing had been penalised?
Joseph Mackey
Athlone
Co Westmeath
No penalty shootouts for Gaelic football
Why does the GAA feel that it should mimic soccer in how it decides a drawn game?
Recently I watched the Ulster Football Final. It’s sad that the GAA has reverted to just a shootout between a shooter and a goalkeeper when it has many more interesting options available. Why not do a combination of varied frees - distances and locations in addition to “penalties”. I further suggest in this scenario that the ‘penalty’ should be equal to two points (rather than three). It might take a bit longer but it would lead to a fairer distribution of skills (as is really the case with GAA Football versus soccer). It would also be more interesting for the spectator.
Gerard Walsh
Ontario
Canada
EU ‘peace project’ a distant memory
Defence and Foreign Affairs Minister Micheál Martin stated in his Dáil speech on May 18 that he anticipates that the forum on international security ”will provide a space to examine critically and unambiguously … our responsibilities towards our European and other like-minded international partners”.
A critical look at military spending by our European partners reveals that from Jan 2022 to Feb 2023, 23 EU countries gave over €15bn in military aid to Ukraine, and the EU institutions (EU Commission and EU Council) contributed a further €3.6bn.
Minister Martin also tells us that the forum will examine what the EU is doing through the European Peace Facility to support Ukraine. This ‘peace’ facility, worth €5bn will boost the EU’s ability to develop and acquire new weapons, provide training and equipment, and for the first time, lethal weapons, to armies around the world.
In addition, the €8bn funded European Defence Fund, which Ireland pays into, is aimed at developing and acquiring new weapons and technologies.
The Forum will also examine Pesco. Under this facility, we have committed to making the European Defence industry more competitive and to having our technical and operational standards interoperable with NATO.
According to the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, up to April 2021, there have been over 23,000 civilian casualties in Ukraine.
The Dutch NGO PAX states that “the European Union is drifting farther and farther away from that initial idea of a peace project and these instruments, the peace facility and the defence fund, are very clear examples”.
In the light of our constitutional principle of the pacific settlement of international disputes by international arbitration, to which Minister Martin referred to in his speech, surely he should now clearly and unequivocally call a halt to the accelerating militarisation of the EU. In the words of Bertrand Russell, war does not determine who is right, only those who are left.
Elizabeth Cullen
Thomastown
Co Kilkenny
Time to deport those fake ‘Irish patriots’
In light of recent violent protests against international protection applicants, perhaps it’s time to use the flawed logic of these bitter begrudgers against them.
We know that a large proportion of these right-wing activist group leaders come from other countries. If any of these non-Irish “Irish patriots” are found to have instigated public disorder, they should be deported back to where they come from.
Deportations can be carried out for the public interest. It is most certainly in the public interest to stamp out seeds of fascism, a concept which is alien to every concept of Irishness.
Fachtna O’Raftery
Clonakilty
Co Cork
Gardaí inconsistent on handling protests
It is remarkable that Commissioner Harris now promotes the idea of consensus policing given the history of An Garda Síochana in dealing with the Debenhams strike and the Shell to Sea protests, and the contrast with its so-called consensus policing in the face of anti-immigration protests.
Researchers have indicated that a consensus policing model is collaborative and that members of society work together to achieve justice.
The contradictions exposed in the delivery of different kinds of justice in the above examples is worrying, to say the least. Perhaps it is less about consensus policing while Garda leadership awaits the receipt of clear instructions from Mr Harris’ Department as to how to proceed. While Mr Harris suggests we should stand back and let the police do their work, it is apparent that there are no standard operating procedures that can cope with relatively new types of political confrontations in Ireland. In such circumstances, it seems, An Garda Síochana must await instructions on how to proceed from its political masters.
Consensus policing is also designed to increase trust in the public. The evident inconsistencies and the protection of a small group of anti-immigrant protesters from the force of law can only serve to diminish trust among the larger proportion of the country, which does not support the dangerous actions of a few. This is not consensus policing, it is the opposite. Perhaps it should be called dissensus policing.
Dr Finian Fallon
Wards Hill
Dublin 8
Lessen Leaving Cert pressure with love
May I give some advice to the many parents of children who will be sitting their Leaving Cert in two weeks?
I am into my 70s and still have nightmares about sitting mine. Tell your children, and often, that you love them. Tell them that you hope they will do their best but whatever the outcome they can come home and they will be loved just as much as ever. Tell them there is lifelong learning and the Leaving Cert is but one, relatively small, stepping stone along the road of life. And always remember, the ones who do best do not always succeed best in life.
I sat my Leaving Cert in 1969, and the pressure was horrific, way over the top. Of course, it did not help that school life in general at that time was a very unhappy experience. I survived and learnt very quickly there was a lot more to life than the Leaving Cert.
Brian Mc Devitt
Glenties
Co Donegal
