This afternoon.

Speaking in the Dáil, Mr Martin said the report from the Commission of Investigation into the homes has afforded the country a “moment for us as a society to recognise a profound failure of empathy, understanding and basic humanity over a lengthy period”.

“On behalf of the Government, the State and its citizens, I apologise for the profound generational wrong visited upon Irish mothers and their children who ended up in a Mother and Baby Home or a County Home.

“As the commission says plainly – ‘they should not have been there’.”

Micheál Martin apologised for the shame and stigma which the women and children were subjected to and which, for some, he said “remains a burden to this day”.

“In apologising, I want to emphasise that each of you were in an institution because of the wrongs of others. Each of you is blameless, each of you did nothing wrong and has nothing to be ashamed of.”

‘The State failed you’, says Taoiseach to those in mother-and-baby homes (RTÉ)

Earlier: ‘It Surprised Everyone…Not Least The Sisters of Bon Secours in Ireland’

Slightly Bemused writes:

So I wore a hole in my sock today. Well, technically 3 holes. Second time this week, although the one yesterday was a single hole. Both in the heel, first right, then left. And a big toe started peeping out the end. I am not sure what this means.

These socks owe me nothing – they are 15 years old if they are a day, and have been washed in a variety of ways from washing machines, to hotel sinks to washboards at the side of a river somewhere. One of my t-shirts of similar vintage also decided to give up this past week. I wear my clothes to destruction.

Superstition tells us that if you wear a hole in your sock, you will receive a letter. If two holes wore in your sock within the same week it is a sign that you will soon receive a gift. As far as I can tell, superstition is silent on the matter of multiple-sock-multiple-hole scenarios, but I live in hope. The one thing that is certain is that ultimately a new pair of socks is coming my way.

When I was young, a hole in my sock meant that more often than not my mother would be out with the darning needle. These days, the material my socks are made of would not take kindly to such treatment, and so my socks are destined for a different fate. Just what, as yet, I cannot say, but that spirit of not just chucking something out because it is no longer pristine remains with me.

After washing, they make great dusters; if trimmed right, they can make good wrist warmers (not that that is needed here); or if transferred to an imaginative child, they could be anything their minds can craft them into. My daughter made hand puppets, as I am sure generations of children have done.

But there are generations of children who have never made a sock puppet. And in many of the places I worked, I am sure there are many who never will. And not because they are not imaginative, or resourceful, or careful not to waste items that have passed their original use. The plethora of homemade toys I see every day is testament to that.

No, they likely will not make sock puppets for a more basic reason: they mostly do not have socks in daily use. The footwear of choice there is the flip flop, or sandal, or thong (for our antipodean friends). It is cheap, cheerful, and more importantly, cool. I have occasionally had snickers come my way at wearing socks in such a hot climate.

Socks are certainly available, and are worn, but only with the good shoes, like on Sundays and special occasions. This will wear them out slower, while the wearing of sandals allows one to be much cooler.

Except of course for those who were forced to flee their homes. They might not even have the flip flops. I have occasionally asked myself, as this morning, that if I were forced to leave at no notice, what would I try to take with me? Would socks be high on my list of priorities? or would I go for the photo albums of my daughter? Or the external disc drives with my electronic data? What if I had not time, and all I was left with were my socks?

Today in far too many places, millions of people have been forced from their homes with little or no warning. I heard stories of women walking for over 8 days, carrying their children and little else, to get to safety. They came without socks, and occasionally without flip flops, or they wore out. Yet on they came, seeking a place to allow their children to be children.

So this morning, as I contemplate the holes in the heels of my socks I do wish for a gift, but not for me. I wish for the gift of peace so children can explore their own imaginations in peace, and mothers do not have to walk for days just to keep their families alive. And maybe even a sock puppet or two may make a dull day more amusing.

Slightly Bemused‘s column appears here every Wednesday.

Pic: Alamy sock stock

The Moon: changing its appearance nightly depending on numerous factors but nonetheless entirely predictable. To wit:

As the Moon orbits the Earth, the half illuminated by the Sun first becomes increasingly visible, then decreasingly visible. The featured video animates images taken by NASA’s Moon-orbiting Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to show all 12 lunations that appear this year, 2021. A single lunation describes one full cycle of our Moon, including all of its phases. A full lunation takes about 29.5 days, just under a month (moon-th). As each lunation progresses, sunlight reflects from the Moon at different angles, and so illuminates different features differently. During all of this, of course, the Moon always keeps the same face toward the Earth. What is less apparent night-to-night is that the Moon‘s apparent size changes slightly, and that a slight wobble called a libration occurs as the Moon progresses along its elliptical orbit.

(Video: Data: Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter ; Animation: NASA‘s Scientific Visualization Studio; Music: Brandenburg Concerto No4-1 BWV1049 (Johann Sebastian Bach), by Kevin MacLeod via Incompetech)

apod

The grounds where the unmarked mass grave containing the remains of hundreds of infants who died at the Bon Secours mother-and-baby home in Tuam, County Galway from 1925-1961 rests

Terry Prone on behalf of the Bon Secours in 2014

 

Statement from the Sisters of Bon Secours in Ireland this morning

Earlier: “This Is Not How Inquiries Into Human Rights Violations Are Supposed To Happen”

RollingNews

Post-Party – Being Honest

Revenge is a dish best served cold.

Dublin-based pop-rock quartet Post-Party stick it to the bullies in their latest video directed by the band’s Colin Peppard.

Peppard and his bandmates Keelan O’Reilly, Matthew O’Reilly and Peter Toal aim to write songs reflective of their own experiences.

Fans of The Strokes will cheer from the sidelines.

Nick says: Party time.

Post-Party

1.54pm: We’re Back! Power outage in Bodger’s hood for the past 24 hours. Sorry all.

Earlier…

Apologies for this further temporary break in transmission.

Technical difficulties, normal service will resume, etc.

Conspiracy theories welcome.

From top: Trína Mulryan and Dr Maeve O’Rourke on RTÉ’s Prime Time last night; at the Tuam mother and baby home in Galway

Last night.

During an item on the final report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes on RTÉ’s Prime Time, in which Minister for Children Roderic O’Gorman was present in the studio…

Trína Mulryan, daughter of Peter Mulryan, spoke about the Certain Institutional Burials (Authorised Interventions) Bill which the Tuam Home Survivors Network believes will prevent the holding of any inquest into the deaths of at least 9,000 children and mothers, in mother and baby homes.

Ms Mulryan said:

“First of all, I’d just like to comment that Roderic O’Gorman mentioned there, that he had a number of weeks to read a printed-out version of the report. Survivors and family members affected by this got a number of hours and we haven’t got a printed-off version and we’ve barely been able to look at it.

“So it’s very difficult to actually comment on the report at all but what I will say is that what is very concerning about Tuam in particular, it does call out Tuam as being particularly different to the rest of the mother and baby homes for very negative reasons. And how the children and babies were actually buried there.

“And there is very, very strong evidence to support that there should be a Coroner assigned to work on an inquest to determine how those babies and children died in Tuam. The report just reiterates the fact that the mortality rate was much higher than it should have been and the fact that the conditions were dire.

“So, we’ve asked this question multiple times of Roderic O’Gorman, of Leo Varadkar and we have never received an answer – why there is not a full and proper investigation into how and why they died.

“There’ll be no satisfaction and no truth from any report unless we know that the proper process, the law of the land, is followed, and that those babies and children are given not just a dignified burial but actually the truth of how and why they possibly lie in the grounds of that former mother and baby home institution, why they lie there.

“We don’t even know, we can’t trust the documentation so we can’t say the full picture is painted in the report. What is in the report, the survivors and family members have lived through this, it’s not surprising.

“I will say as well there was a small amount of people who were actually involved in interviews for this report. There are many other people that are living abroad that weren’t interviewed for this. So there are many reasons to believe that the report is not painting a true picture.

“But for the family members of those babies and children, there is no closure until the proper law of the land is followed through an inquest which the legislation the Government is trying to bring in is trying to bypass that process and that’s not good enough. And we will not accept that.”

Later, human rights lawyer and Director of the LLM Human Rights Law Clinic at the Irish Centre for Human Rights in NUI Galway Dr Maeve O’Rourke was also asked about the report. Initially, she was asked if the State was stepping up by offering an apology and redress.

Dr O’Rourke said:

“I think all we need to hear is what we heard from the Mulryan family which is that they would like the law of the land to apply. And so it’s really interesting to hear the minister already, as a legal expert, starting to parse the commission’s report because he can see, and I can see, and we can all see that this commission was an interesting procedure and, primarily, is about opening up a story to the public.

“It’s not a justice measure. It’s an aside to the justice measures of our democracy.

“There is a need for inquests, there is a need for Garda specialised investigations, there is a need to enable people to access court and there, of course, are needs for immediate restorative justice measures.

“There’s a massive need for an immediate access to information. The way that this commission operated, I mean we see today in the levels of stress that it has caused to people for everything to be secret for five years until finally they’re allowed to comment. This is not how inquiries into human rights violations are supposed to happen under European or international law. It’s not how they happen in England.

“People who are affected by Tuam and every single institution and, more to the point, by the adoption system as a whole did not have access to any of the evidence coming in, they didn’t have access to their own testimony, they didn’t have access to their own records, they couldn’t suggest lines of inquiry. And so really the Government needs to step up now and it needs to go beyond the limitations of this commission which it had a great part in creating in that the Oireachtas of course set up the 2004 Commissions of Investigation Act – that says nothing gathered can be given to the guards or to the courts.

“But also, you know, it has stood by for five years, while people like the Mulryan family have been saying where is the inquest? The coroner has sufficient powers.”

Dr O’Rourke added:

“The Government tomorrow could put one section amendment to the Civil Registration Act, in any single bill going through the Oireachtas, to say ‘the registrar general shall give to every person the information they need to retrieve their publicly registered birth certificate‘.

“Dr Conor O’Mahony who is the Government’s own advisor on children, to the Department of Children, on human rights, said this morning, and I absolutely agree with him, that the way of balancing the right to identity, which is absolutely fundamental, in a democracy – who am I? – the way of balancing that with the right to privacy is to give access to information and then to enable people to voluntarily disclose their contact details to each other. Not to reveal them without people’s consent but who I am, is absolutely fundamental and it cannot be kept from people.”

Watch back in full here.

UPDATE:

Meanwhile, this morning, on RTE’s Morning Ireland, broadcaster Mary Wilson put it to Dr O’Rourke that the report has been sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Ms Wilson asked what value “at this time and distance” could inquests serve.

Dr O’Rourke said:

“So the coroner has an obligation, under the 1962 Coroner’s Act to hold an inquest wherever there is an unexplained or suspicious death and the practice, as well, is that inquests are ordinary where people have died in the care of the State. And the point there is is that it is about the individual, it’s about establishing a relationship to that individual, who they are, how they died and that’s what the families are looking for and that is what they’ve been telling us since day one, since the beginning of this investigation. We need to know our own circumstances.”

Ms Wilson then asked if there is nay further information that could be gleaned from inquests that are not already known from the report or from research by survivor groups or people such as Dr O’Rourke.

Dr O’Rourke said:

“But sure nothing to date has given access to the individuals to their own files or their own family files. This has all been an exercise in talking to the public in general terms. There still are no statutory rights. And in practice people’s rights are being denied to their own information, to their own family files.

“We have, in my opinion, an existing situation of enforced disappearance which is one of the most serious violations of international law, where someone is institutionalised with the involvement of the State, following which their fate and whereabouts is not disclosed by the State to their family and that needs to be remedied immediately by the Government now.”

Listen back in full here

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