So, after ten years of ‘negotiations’, it seems five of the eight religious orders ‘in negotiations’ with the Irish state have yet to offer a single cent towards the costs of reparations to victims for their monstrous behaviour in the country’s infamous mother and baby homes.
How has this compensation, such as it is, been allowed to be a ‘voluntary’ act? From the three orders that have ‘engaged’ in the process, the combined sum offered so far, according to news stories today, is less than €15m. The State, meanwhile, has already set aside €800m.
It will be noted that the eight orders are estimated to have combined net assets of approximately €1.32bn (yes, billion)and over €86m cash in hand.
‘I believe much more could have been done,’ says minister Norma Foley, ‘by the other religious bodies concerned,’ unwittingly reminding us of the actual bodies of the thousand+ children whose remains were discovered unceremoniously dumped in unmarked pits on the properties of these same god-serving institutions.
But it’s a sunny April day today. I’m prepared to be reasonable.
SO HERE’S MY PROPOSAL —
Every blade of grass,
every cluttered shed and gleaming palace,
every floor-tile and roof-tile and coat-stand and cornice,
every elbow-polished door jamb, every shoe-worn lintel,
every long dark corridor and radiant stained glass window,
every scrap of guarded ledger, every carefully protected silence,
every crucified Christ and every statue of a teenage virgin —
I’d take the bloody lot of it
in a dawn-raid Easter Morning Rising,
and give back to the people
whose suffering it was built on
a fleeting glimpse of justice here on earth.