Sir, - Dr Geraldine Moane of the Department of Psychology at UCD suggests that cruelty to children in Irish institutions was due to a defect in Irish society caused by the Famine.
I doubt this. Having had a childhood spent partly in the West of Ireland and partly in the North of England, 50 and more years ago, I experienced the attitudes and behaviours towards children in both societies. I found that Irish people as a whole were much kinder to children than English people, but that the treatment of children in Irish schools was far worse than in English schools.
There is a possible explanation for this. When the Irish Free State was established in 1922 the treatment of children in schools in Ireland and Britain was fairly standardised and a child could move between schools in the two countries and be beaten just as frequently in one place as in the other. After 1922 the Free State became ossified, while in Britain things progressed, albeit slowly, in education as in other fields. Something like a 40-year time-lag developed, and Irish schools and institutions continued with practices long abandoned elsewhere.
From this point of view, institutional cruelty is simply part of the colonial legacy continued into the neo-colonial era, like, for example, driving on the left. - Yours, etc., Pol O Croidheain,
Boithrin Fada, Cathrach na Gaillimhe.