Sir, – Gerry Murray (February 11th) claims that the “sensational coverage” in The Irish Times is damaging the “reputation of this country”.
I would suggest that we don’t need any help from journalists in this regard.
We should have “antipathy to (a) church and state” that facilitated systems which forced vulnerable people to work as slave labourers and subjected them to emotional, physical and sexual abuse on a horrifying scale.
Today the only thing we can do to restore our tarnished reputation in these matters is to acknowledge past offences, compensate and apologise to the victims, and take measures to ensure that future generations will suffer under such conditions.
A good first step among these latter measures would be to end the unwarranted deference towards a church which has abused its position in such an appalling way. Ireland needs a complete separation of church and state. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Breda O’Brien asks rhetorically whether “any section of Irish society did not have some involvement in the Magdalene laundries”. She then gives a litany of failures of the secular state – failures in child protection, sex worker protection, and political ethics. She concludes by suggesting the establishment of a fund for Magdalene survivors in acknowledgment of “social solidarity” and that “every section of society let them down.” I cannot see what is gained by that miasma of loose associations. I cannot see what is served by equivocating between “some involvement” and responsibility. I cannot see what is worthwhile in an argumentative strategy that would exculpate some by implicating all. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – While I’m no apologist for the Catholic Church, I’d like to correct Hugh Pierce’s comments (February 7th). The Magdalene laundries were started as a Protestant-only institution for “fallen women” and in Northern Ireland they continued as such. The Catholic Church did open them later in the Republic.
Before we beat the church and State for the treatment received, we need to take a look closer to home. It was our grandparents who threw their daughters onto the streets and left them and their unborn children to literally starve. The good citizens of Ireland did not help either. They shunned those helpless women.
The only people who offered any help were these institutions.
While the conditions in the laundries were far from perfect they were a far sight better than the prospect of dying cold and hungry on the street while our grandparents shunned them.
Life in Ireland in the 1930s and 1940s was a harsh place. The vast majority of the country worked long hours for little pay and could be sacked on a whim; it is in that context that we must view the conditions of these institutions.
It’s neither the church nor the State’s fault: it is the fault of each and every one of us and our families as a society.
But sometimes it is easier to see the speck in our brother’s eye than the plank in our own. – Yours, etc,