Letters to the Editor: Calls for Westbank redress being ignored
The Mother and Baby Home Commission of Inquiry, in its second interim and final reports, said former residents of the Westbank Orphanage (Greystones, Wicklow) were due redress under the 2002 Residential Institutions Redress scheme. Children’s Minister Roderic O’Gorman and the government ignored that recommendation. Picture: Damien Storan/PA
Westbank Orphanage residents not also in the Bethany Home (1922-72), of whom I am one, are not part of the group of 459 survivors who received mother and baby home compensation payments.
The Mother and Baby Home Commission of Inquiry, in its second interim and final reports, said former residents of the Westbank Orphanage (Greystones, Wicklow) were due redress under the 2002 Residential Institutions Redress scheme.
Children’s Minister Roderic O’Gorman and the government ignored that recommendation.
We suffered physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. Westbank children were used as free farm labour and as professional orphans singing for our supper in church halls in Northern Ireland. The institution was run by the unqualified Adeline Mathers.
She exploited us to promote her evangelical Protestant brand of Christianity and to fund the institution. The Bethany Home and Westbank shared the same ideology and some Bethany children were sent to Westbank. Some, like me, were not.
I was invited to sit on O’Gorman’s Collaborative Forum talking shop after the Mother and Baby Home Commission reported. The Forum called for Westbank redress. A Dáil committee supported the call.
The minister ignored that too. Westbank residents wrote to the Taoiseach, who is from Greystones, some months ago. We followed up when he did not reply. Maybe he will, when he gets back from his holidays.
Sidney Herdman, Richhill, Co Armagh
Scheme’s clear underestimation
On behalf of our late father Derek Linster, we are among the 134 applicants who have turned down a compensation determination by Roderic O’Gorman’s mother and baby home payments unit.
The determination, dated June 28, that Derek Linster was resident in Bethany Home for 184 days is a gross underestimate.
The determination did not specify the dates on which it was asserted that our father was resident in the institution.
Derek was resident in Bethany Home after birth in July 1941 and was sent to a Wicklow so-called nurse mother in January 1942.
Bethany Home ordered Derek’s return to the institution about January 1944, after the nurse mother complained to Bethany about sending her very ill children, including Derek.
Though well on his return, Bethany Home sent Derek to Cork Street Isolation hospital with severe illness in August 1944, a year with a high Bethany death rate. Derek returned again after hospitalisation. Bethany subjected Derek to an irregular ‘adoption’ by a family in Wicklow, organised in March 1945 through Hayes and Sons Solicitors.
The time from 1944-45 appears to have been discounted by the minister’s officials, though scheme criteria say it should be included in a determination.
We are astonished by the clear underestimate represented by the payments scheme ‘determination’. It calls into question the adequacy of records and/or an ability to interpret them. The scheme itself is also miserly (for example in not including time with contracted nurse mothers).
Deborah Linster-Ali, Gail Summers, Amanda James, and Kerry Wilkins, Daughters of the late Carol and Derek Linster Rugby, England
Mode of birth matters
Regarding Esther McCarthy’s piece on August 10 (‘Giving birth via the sunroof is no picnic’, Weekend), surgical birth in Ireland has risen exponentially in recent years, in some units one in two first-time mothers now give birth by caesarean section.
Vaginal birth after caesarean (VBAC) is a safe and viable option for the vast majority of women who have had a previous caesarean section; we even have national guidelines to ensure this practice.
According to both our national guidelines for VBAC and our national induction guidelines, induction after caesarean is an option utilising mechanical methods of induction. VBAC after two caesareans is also a viable option and should be supported if a vaginal birth is the chosen mode of birth.
Caesarean section is major abdominal surgery and should be reserved for when the clinical need arises, or if a woman chooses it as an elective procedure.
With every subsequent caesarean, the risk of placenta accreta increases. This is a far more dangerous complication than uterine rupture, as it has a higher mortality rate, and women must be counselled of this risk appropriately when planning births.
Mode of birth matters. If a woman feels that choices were not available to her and options not presented in a fair, balanced, and objective way, this can lead to trauma and other very serious mental health complications following birth, not to mention the physical toll of repeated major abdominal surgeries.
On November 23, Aims Ireland will be hosting an information day on birth after caesarean. See
aimsireland.ie
Claire Kerin, Research officer, Aims (Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services) Ireland
Sport and riots
The contrast between the celebrations taking place in Paris before, during, and after the Olympics, and the riots taking place in a not so United Kingdom shows that sport, like music, brings people of all religions, colours, and genders together in an harmonious way.
The reason is, for many, sport imbues a discipline in people who are willing to self-sacrifice hours and years of themselves to represent their countries and communities on the world stage, while those who riot, for whatever their reasons, enjoy only 15 minutes of fame in front of the media but fail miserably to understand the consequences of their actions, while all they do is harm and destroy the very society they grow up in and who they pretend to represent.
While some rioters will feel a legitimacy for their actions, spurred on by social media disinformation, whether on anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-gender, racism, or feeling disenfranchised, they should be reminded that those people who they cheer on at major sporting events, and who have flown their countries’ flags are the children, grandchildren etc, of immigrants from all walks of life.
While the rioters will be rewarded with jail time and a conviction, treated as pariahs in their own communities, those who competed in the Olympics will be rewarded with adulation — some with medals — but most importantly for their courage and determination to succeed and bringing communities of all persuasions together.
Christy Galligan, Letterkenny, Co Donegal
RTÉ’s remit
I certainly would never advocate for the closing down of RTÉ. I believe it does a very good job in terms of the journalism it does and the quality of journalists within its stable. However, I believe RTÉ has to plan for the future apropos to the place of newspapers and news organisations in the modern 21st century.
One sometimes gets the impression from RTÉ that nobody else can do it like they do. I have to question how often does RTÉ, following an agenda set down by newspapers, are then energised in announcing its own news. What does RTÉ do if it still survives but finds there are no newspapers or news websites there which provides them with inspiration and ideas?
John O’ Brien, Clonmel, Co Tipperary
Art of Banksy
I think Banksy, with all his silly doodlings, is becoming so mainstream as to be boring.
Where’s the political activism he was lauded with displaying back in the day? Where are the drawings of the murdered children from Gaza?
Give it a rest with the paint — because when copywriting your work is more important to your bank balance than your commitment to the rights of man, you’ve really moved on. And much of Bansky’s work can be equally achieved by a nine-year-old, or by me with a proper stencil and spray-can.
Robert Sullivan, Bantry, Co Cork
Election ‘chaos’
Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said that foreign sources wanted to “sow chaos throughout our democratic process”.
As an interested observer of many elections, Australian, US and other, it would appear that most are chaotic so this is not unusual.
Surely the most chaotic component of the current US election is Donald Trump, and his early morning tweets although the Maga supporters, as shown on TV, also seem chaotic, and maybe deluded. Elections should be decided on facts, policies, and not personalities.
Dennis Fitzgerald, Melbourne, Australia
