Faoi dosharaitheacht dosheachanta....

national | miscellaneous | news report Friday October 25, 2002 19:13 by iosaf mac diarmada iosaf at email dot com barcelona 0034679708674

concerning the 'inescapble' 'sanctity' (of life)

I suppose hundred of thousands of Irish people heard RTE morning this morning.

Today as many days the workers, schoolchildren, elderly, students, politicians and "home-makers" might have awoken to the RTE Morning Ireland programme.

For their enlightenment 12 news items.
Two of which I would like to draw attention to (if I may).

item number 7. Father Paul Murphy, Director of the Child Protection Office with the Conference of Religious in Ireland, discusses the need for anonymity by some victims of clerical abuse, and whether that will be compromised by any investigation of what happened

item number 9. Marian Dempster, a Cork woman who was sent to live and work in a laundry in her teens, discusses her experiences and gives her reaction to Peter Mullan's new film 'The Magdalene Sisters'

Ireland now that she has calmed down after the referendum to ratify the Treaty of Nice and thus incorporate it in to the Irish Constitution now sees changes in its Dail.

New leaders of the "Irish Labour" party, and a new technical grouping.

The ghosts of the past have arrived once more to rattle the chains of future malcontent.

Family values have been the paltform of more than one Independent deputy to Dail Eireann.
We have not forgotten Countess Markievicz and others in the 1920´s.
We have not forgotten Noel Brown.
We have not forgotten anything.
Between 1930 and 1974 in excess of 250,000 Irish citizens were offered for Adoption mostly through the supervision of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland.
Than means at least 250,000 mothers.
Marion Dempster who spoke this morning on RTE radio then was not alone. Perhaps why RTE has chosen as long as I can remember to seasonally awaken the Irish people with such a recurrent story. ...."one of the favourites"
So Irish electorate, citizens, rump of what sometimes appears little more than a diasporiac migrant ethnic identity;
Do you think time has come?
Most of the mothers who escaped the abuse and bonded labour of the Mary Magedelene homes left Ireland to make lives afresh elsewhere.
Could we hear some thoughts from the technical grouping on Family provisions to be discussed in the forthcoming Dail?
Could we hear of apology to the Irish people for institutionalised abuse?
Could we perhaps now be made aware of generations of clerical inteference in not only family law but all items of Irish public life?
Or is this story to re-appear next year again?

Before 1974 The Roman Catholic Church sponsered (mostly convents) adoption agencies were allowed to make "private placements", these in addition to the M.M. homes were a gross abuse of identity. Mothers and children were hindered in tracing each other. On many occasions MM home inmates were kept as bonded labour for the duration of their lives and buried in unmarked graves. The mindset which allowed this abuse has not gone away. It marches on in the form of the generation of politicians "in control" of the Irish people today.
It is most odd that those who have most viciferously argued against open-ness in governance and society are those who have most rabidly imposed a flawed ethical order.
We did not forget Countess Markievicz.
We did not forget Noel Brown.
Numerous attempts to demonstrate the democratic mandate of the majority of Irish people, be they resident in Ireland are not, to change family welfare provision and atone for the abuse of the last century of children and women have been subverted.
Subverted : so that they may only re-appear in countless Irish memories today.

:Autonomy begins with self:
:Heart and Mind: