Sir, – Not for the first time Kitty Holland drags us kicking and screaming out of our collective “growth” comfort zone to confront the realities of life for many. (“Children’s heartbreaking testimonies reveal reality of life in family hubs”, Front page, April 18th).
Her report on “family hubs” is among the most gut-wrenching and, at the same time, infuriating.
As we struggle to deal with ongoing exposures of how people deemed “problems” were put, and buried, out of sight in the not too distant past, it is plain to see that the thinking/ideology responsible is still at work; providing even the basics needed to create a well-ordered society is outsourced at every turn.
We can clearly see that the lives of thousands of children are being severely damaged by refusing to divide resources in a manner that ensures each has access to the means to live with a modicum of privacy, security and dignity.
We are being governed by thinking that is surely morally corrupt and the newspaper headlines of 15 years hence could be written down today.
Reports of children who were deprived, brutalised and abused will be accompanied by weasel words of handwringing politicians scurrying around looking for someone else to blame.
To paraphrase Donald Tusk, there must be a special place in hell for those with power to change things but who choose to stand idly by in the face of such thundering unjustness. – Yours, etc,
JIM O’SULLIVAN,
Rathedmond, Sligo.