Sir, – While I appreciate Enda Kenny’s apology to the Magdalene women, I would like to know when apologies will be issued from the church and State concerning women and girls who were put under extreme pressure by those running laundries to give up babies they did not want to give up and were not supported in keeping? – Yours, etc,
Sir, – It was good to hear Enda Kenny acknowledging Ireland’s failure in respect of what we used to offensively and judgmentally referred to as “fallen women”.
He’s wrong about one thing though – we haven’t learned our lessons. Today we are still “putting away” the problematic, dispirited, unlucky “them”, this time using the euphemism “direct provision.” Enda Kenny and the rest should take a serious look at the documents of truth about life in these residential institutions that have been published by the Irish Refugee Council, Doras Luimní, AkiDwA, Nasc, etc, over the past decade. – Yours, etc,
A chara, – It is timely to recall Austin Clarke’s poem Living on sin in the collection Flight to Africa (1963), written 50 years before the McAleese report: “The hasty sin of the young after a dance,/Awkward in clothes against a wall or crick-necked/ In car, gives many a nun her tidy bed, /Full board and launderette. God-fearing State/ Provides three pounds a week, our conscience money/ For every infant severed from the breast. – Is mise,