A place that still hasn’t come to any child’s rescue; a place that hasn’t made any meaningful arrests or interrogation of the Catholic Church and Religious Congregations; a State which benefitted handsomely from the incarceration and inhuman treatment of tens of thousands of people; a police force that turned a blind eye and said a prayer instead of doing its duty; a State whose privileged citizenry, protected the will of the Church ignoring the cries and pleas of their own children; a place whose Governments continuously endorsed and protected criminal gangs of child abusers within the Church and State; a Nation whose church manufactured lies and conspired constantly and thoroughly to deny the truth and hold hostage a people; a landscape made green by the constant flow of tears of inhumanly treated and enslaved children; a country whose Sunday clothes were scrubbed clean by women held in slavery in workhouse laundries.
No honest truth here. No inclusion. No rights. No care, just absence of any true accountability and words from the mouth of a new Taoiseach whose personal standing is rising in the polls, while the soil of the Nation screams out in agony for nurture, for true love and final vindication.
The hills are still alive with the sounds of the unheard screaming. The future holds further trauma, endless suffering and deep, hidden home-truths yet to be revealed in future reports into Kerry, into Limerick, into Donegal, into Louth and others of the 32 counties of Ireland – all united in abuse, rape, terror and torture by those among us who are our most trusted leaders, while the rest stand idly by conjuring up meaningless statements of how the system failed, of how sorry they are, and how committed they are to right the wrongs when, really, they are just a continuation of the insult, of the treachery and of the betrayal.
The soul of any Nation must always be its children. Every person should carry that soul preciously. That soul is in flight from the Republic of Ireland. It left a place of no comfort, no sanctuary and no nurture.
The proclamations and announcements of Bertie Ahern, Brian Cowen and all their ministers, of TDs, Popes and Clerics will not bring it back. It will only return when it knows it’s safe. This indeed is the Republic of Ireland, the most unsafe place for the child and a haven for hurt, tragedy and pain. The empowered and the ruling classes cannot bestow any words of comfort here. They were part and parcel of the very culture of abuse. The key players that enabled the culture and practice to thrive cannot be facilitated to make good their escape from the consequences of their deliberate non-action.
The words of Enda Kenny may bring comfort and satisfaction to his followers and, to the privileged, bring a measure of emancipation and relief from association with this criminality. Alas, for the many thousands who are strewn across the land overshadowed by the contamination of abuse and betrayal, there is little light.
Words in a Dáil speech, sermons from the pulpit, pontificating from the Vatican are no substitutes for lawful warrants, for the arrests of those who were engaged in this shameful catastrophic war and terror perpetrated on children and the non-protected.
The courts and the justice of some land should be the final arbitrators of this uncivilised barbaric matter.
The truth that will set us free is not words. It is not deeds. It is when, finally, that soul which left a long time ago, is nurtured back to its rightful place in a future republic. A true republic, brought about by the people of Ireland, who will finally know the value of personal and collective responsibility and accountability. This will truly be the beginning not of a nation once again, but of a people’s nation once and for all, true and equal, free from the enslavement of State and Church agency capture.
