IRELAND
Irish Times
Vincent Twomey
Tue, Jul 29, 2014
According to the Government’s inter-departmental group, the proposed commission of investigation on mother and baby homes, the commission should be different from previous inquiries into child abuse and neglect: “The particular social and historical issues which the commission of investigation will be asked to explore are likely to distinguish the nature of its investigations from those of many other commissions.”
The report illustrates this by giving an impressive sketch of recent historical studies into the various issues raised by the treatment of unmarried mothers and their children in Ireland.
All this appears to stress an important difference between issues of criminality and neglect central to previous inquiries, and questions of social change and cultural change at the heart of our debate about mother and baby homes.
Former minister for health James Reilly seemed to take a similar approach. The goal of the commission, he announced in the Dáil (July 17th, 2014) was “to bring a true and clear picture of this part of our history into full public view.”
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.