Madam, - A number of correspondents have argued that the religious orders are not primarily responsible for what occurred in the institutions they were running, and have defended the compensation scheme agreed between these orders and the Government on these grounds. It has been argued that (a) the State failed to provide sufficient funding, training or supervision for these institutions; and (b) the orders were running these institutions on behalf of the State.
Neither of these arguments shifts the burden of responsibility from the orders. To claim that the State failed to supervise the members of the religious orders is a curious defence, given that the senior members of these orders were the individuals charged to administer the institutions and thus were the people primarily capable of and responsible for supervision.
As regards the second argument, Ivo O'Sullivan claimed that the State "found it convenient to burden religious institutions with difficult problems relating to infants and children" (October 17th), but the choice of accepting this burden was presumably up to the orders in question. Why were they so eager to undertake a task which their members were not capable of discharging?
For decades the State effectively privatised the institutional handling of children; this may have been a dereliction of its duty, but because this was the system in place the responsibility for what occurred must in consequence fall primarily on the private bodies in question. And because of this fact, the religious orders should be paying much greater sums in compensation.¨ - Yours, etc.,
DONNCHADH O'CONAILL, Ballinaspaig Lawn,
Bishopstown,
Cork.