Enda Kenny has said he wants to deal with the dark legacies of our past but following his statements this week, he’s still way off the mark, writes
Sinead Pembroke.
11-3- 2017
After numerous reports since the 90s, after the Commission
to Inquire into Child Abuse, the McAleese Report, and the subsequent redress
schemes, this is what the Taoiseach had to contribute around the deplorable
events that are being uncovered.
The Taoiseach and various other high profile government
politicians have made similar remarks in relation to the financial crisis, and
the subsequent recession in Ireland, that it was our fault that we partied too
hard.
Here, we have it all over again: it’s our fault that
children were incarcerated in these institutions.
Revisionism of our horrible history
Not only is this statement a complete revisionism of our
very recent murky history of institutionalised welfare, but it completely lets
the Catholic Church and the state off the hook.
Actually, they, (along with the state), did kidnap our
children. Parents did not send their children to industrial schools because
they wanted to; parents sent them there either because a court compelled them
to, or because they had no choice, (as the state’s policy was to give child
payments to the Religious Orders rather than directly to the parents).
I am the daughter of a survivor of a Christian Brother
institution, and my grandmother certainly did not have my father sent to these
institutions at will; in her case she was a widow who couldn’t afford to keep
her children.
The same can be said for children born in Mother and Baby
Homes.
Having interviewed people who were incarcerated in Magdalene
Laundries, industrial schools and Mother and Baby Homes for numerous research
projects, not only were these institutions intimately intertwined, but mothers
who gave birth in these horrific places, (usually due to the fact they had no
financial or familial support), had to give up their children unwillingly.
Not only were their children taken away from them, they were
sold off to be adopted in places like the US, and many of the women ended up in
Magdalene Laundries after they spent 18 months or so looking after the baby
they were not allowed to keep.
Government must admit to legacy of Church-state
relationship
Enda Kenny also said he wanted to be the Taoiseach to “once
and for all deal with the sad legacies of the past”. With statements like the
above, he is so far off from this.
Ultimately until he and other government politicians can
admit to the deplorable legacy of the relationship between the Church and the
political elite in Ireland, he will never fully deal with this.
What he didn’t say was that women were incarcerated in
Magdalene Laundries or forced to give birth in Mother and Baby Homes because of
the Catholic Church’s morals and values around sex and sexuality.
What he didn’t say was that children were incarcerated in
industrial and reformatory schools because this was the Catholic Church (and
the state’s response) to child welfare in Ireland, and the terms for sentencing
a child to one of these institutions were widened in order to provide a
continuous flow of children (and funding) for these institutions.
And this is the problem with inquiries conducted in a
piecemeal fashion; they do not allow us to see the bigger picture.
We need to keep exposing the Church and state’s role in this
system of abuse because it is only by doing this will we see an end to Catholic
control, in legislation that controls women’s bodies, and in the domains of
education and welfare.
Sinead Pembroke lives and works in Dublin as a researcher
in TASC (Think-Tank for Action on Social Change).
