Madam, – Following the recent discussion in your paper on how to create a New Republic, may I suggest a law change which might play a part in such an enterprise? It is the re-drafting of the law pertaining to the crime previously called “the misprision of a felony”.
The two abuses which were most damaging to Irish society since the State’s inception are the abuse of children and the abuse of the banking system. Both are linked by a common factor: secretiveness. Without the active maintenance of secretiveness both abuses would have been discovered and curtailed. Both bankers and bishops developed a culture of secrecy which was actively maintained, to preserve their institutions at the expense and damage to their “clients”
Ireland, a New Republic, needs some form of the “misprision of a felony” which punishes such malign secrecy with appropriate sentences; which makes accountable those who know of a crime or abuse and are complicit by their silence or active suppression of the truth.
Some months ago, a clerical contributor to this paper asserted that there was no such provision in canon law or civil law. Its provision is long overdue. Perhaps the most recent news suggests we should add politicians to bishops and bankers. – Yours, etc,