IRELAND
Bock the Robber
Posted by Bock on June 10, 2014
How symbolic it is that the inquiry into the oppressive practices of the religious orders in Ireland should be announced by a son of Oliver J Flanagan.
Who’s that? somebody asked me earlier today.
Oliver J Flanagan, TD, was an extremely conservative Catholic bigot, an anti-Semite, a short-lived Fine Gael minister and a proud Knight of Columbanus. The Mountmellick Monolith, as John Healy once called him in the Irish Times, represented the worst of parish-pump Irish political stroke-pulling, a ward-heeling kisser of every episcopal ring that came within 100 miles of his ambit and a symbol of everything that was wrong with this backward little country since independence.
How refreshing, therefore, that his son, Charlie Flanagan, minister for children and youth affairs, should be the one to announce a commission of inquiry into the activities of the mother and baby homes that wrought such misery on some Irish people, with the active support of many others.
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