Tuesday, September 29, 2009
FINTAN O’TOOLE
I SOMETIMES wonder whether we are so passive about the way the Government behaves because we find some of that behaviour literally incredible.
The levels of hypocrisy or incompetence or injustice are so great that the mind cannot quite accept them as reality. They seep into that part of the brain we reserve for outlandish fictions and tall tales.
Instead of getting up to shake our fists, as we might do if we could accept that the story is true, we look on in open-mouthed wonder. We treat the scandal as a spectacle, and thus behave as spectators.
Take for instance, the ways in which the Government has dealt with the idea of compensation in the last fortnight.
To even begin to compare and contrast the treatment by the Government of women who were incarcerated in Magdalen homes on the one side and of the former director general of Fás, Rody Molloy, on the other, is to enter the territory of crude satiric exaggeration. As a story, it is entirely lacking in credibility, except for the minor detail that it is in fact true.
We know the State played a key role in the maintenance of the extraordinary system of Magdalen institutions in which Irish women were incarcerated and enslaved for the crimes of being in “moral danger”.
Many of the women were sent to the homes by the courts. The women slaved in laundries that were often fulfilling State contracts, for the Army or hospitals. The State also failed completely to protect the civil and human rights of these women.
For anyone with a basic sense of justice, it is obvious that the State should compensate the surviving Magdalen women for their appalling treatment. Yet they were excluded from the workings of the Residential Institutions Redress Board.
And earlier this month, Minister for Education Batt O’Keeffe wrote to Tom Kitt TD to say that the Government has no intention of taking any responsibility whatsoever for the treatment of the women and would not do anything to compensate them.
He also deliberately referred to the women as “employees” – a phrase which hints at what will happen if the women take action in the courts. The State will fight them all the way, even to the extent of denying that they were in fact subjected to forced and unpaid labour.
So the message to the surviving Magdalens, almost all of whom are elderly and many of whom are vulnerable and impoverished, is: see you in court.
The State will quite happily spend whatever money it takes to fight the Magdalens all the way to the Supreme Court and beyond.
And it will almost certainly threaten them as it threatened Louise O’Keeffe when she sued the State for the sexual abuse she suffered at national school in the 1970s.
O’Keeffe was warned that the State would pursue her for the entire cost of her case – up to €1 million.
The cruelty of the hard line taken against O’Keeffe and the Magdalens is unspeakable, but it has some logic.
The message it sends out is that the State will use all its considerable resources to intimidate anyone who comes looking for compensation and will relentlessly pursue those who take the risk of suing it in the courts.
Then along comes Molloy and the State is transmogrified from Clint Eastwood to Lady Bountiful. If ever there was a case for saying “so sue me”, it was Molloy’s. He presided over a period in which Fás executives used public money with exuberant indifference and in the process devalued the whole idea of public service.
Molloy should have been sacked and should have counted himself fortunate to be able to leave with his already generous entitlements intact.
Instead, he was rewarded with a pension worth €111,000 a year, a tax-free lump sum of €333,732, and a taxable ex-gratia payment of €111,243.
We were initially told that the decision to top up his pension package to €1 million was taken because he had threatened legal action. But, as the Taoiseach confirmed yesterday, this was not so. Molloy did not even have to threaten legal action to get his way. The State gave him a large wodge of public money just on the off-chance that he might sue.
As compensation for having to retire a few years early because he had failed to do his job properly, Molloy got a million euro. As compensation for being kidnapped and enslaved, the Magdalen women will get nothing.
Can the Government that squares up to the Magdalens, denies their suffering by calling them “employees” and effectively announces its willingness to see them in court, be the same timid creature that was so terrified of Molloy?
The answer of course is that it is not the same. There are two Governments, two States. There is one, stern-faced and implacable, for those to whom harm is done. And there is another, gentle and accommodating, for those who are powerful enough to do harm.
We don’t actually believe this, of course. It is far too outrageous to be true.
The Irish Times.
Why not set up a legal fund for the women? Solicit donations via the media and — sweet irony! — church gate collections.
I am really furious at this callous treatment of these women. Any chance of getting a serious protest going?
Excellent article! There’s no doubt in my mind that organised religion/religious dogma is the epitome of tyranny and when its forced upon a people – as Rome forced itself upon the Irish people – it makes people mad, literally!
AFAIC, it will take a few more generations for the Irish masses to regain their collective sanity.
Martin Maguire (commenter above) asks: Do we get the government we deserve? I think the answer to that is, yes we do. In other words, the present day Irish population (masses) allowing our so-called leaders to “screw” them, just as our parents and grandparents before us let our Roman Catholic masters dictate to them, i.e., control and dominate Irish society.
So, when our corrupt politicos really tighten the screws, the masses will get a taste of what those child and women slaves of the Magadalene Laundries and Industrial Schools had to endure. When we “forget” our past, history inevitably repeats itself.
I’m seriously considering leaving this country for good!
Fintan, I have been saying for some years now how arrogant and bullish the Government is. However, until they hold their hands up to all of their mis-deeds in all aspects, Magdalens, Industrial Schools etc, and say sorry, and mean it, Ireland as a Republic will never be able to hold it’s head up again with the dignity it so desperately needs now.
People simply do not trust the powers that be, and with great justification.
I know that I do not trust them. The Taoiseach (Bertie Ahearn) promised to get back to me many years ago regarding Expunging my “Unlawful Conviction” at age 2 years 11 months, which, was not Expunged at Redress, never mind what the Redress Act 2002 says about it. My conviction, and all others not dealt with properly in the High Court, is still on record.
Even the Solicitors, in recomending the Redress route, knew that it was a “Safe Route” for the Government, and as such are themselves part of the great conspiracy in cheating many people out of their rights.
They will simply continue to cheat and lie.
Very interesting point Fintan, which was picked up on the earlier radio news this morning.
It shows to which extent the human body (and the mind in it) will go to maintain the Equilibrium in Denial. This month, 2 separate studies indicate that “Slapping of Children results in Lower IQ’s (by between 2.8 and 5 points). The Irish people have been able to “handle their denial” thanks to their great creativity (Music and Literature particularly), so it comes as no surprise that, the deeper we sink in this amoral pit of the Church-State Gulag, the more ingenuous the Creativity, ie “…the territory of crude satiric exaggeration”. Or is it that after 250 years, the effect of the black stuff is wearing off…. Satire for some. Heroin for the masses. Imagine Hitler being celebrated in Berlin for his 30th anniversary…. Would he get the same rapturous applause as we have for the Pope here in Ireland…? Somebody help us ! !
Paddy
When My name was published in the Ryan’s Report And I got in touch with the Commission To Inquire Into Child Abuse I was told Sorry It was a mistake.
When I insisted the remove my name and details of my Entry to the Institution I was told to get a solicitor and not to write to them again,knowing full well I could not afford to take the Commission to Court
may
Hi:
Fintan O’Toole’s article is, I find, strangely refreshing.
I think he has encapsulated the thoughts of the many who are ruled by the not so few.
I think his article also points to the need for review by all citizens of the whole desperate episode of this assumption of democratic government and its associated processes, currently culminating in the Magdalene fiasco, that we have been subjected to.
This goes way beyond the current catalyst, the treatment of the Magdalene women, and
I am left wondering how many such displays at this level of ineptitude will the Irish people suffer.
It is time to draw a line, not only in sand but under the continued burden of crass ignorance, despotic attitudes from those who appear to breathe an air that is not shared with the rest of us.
If we are to be governed, let it be by people who really understand the will and wishes of the people they supposedly serve.
Let us start by being represented by people who like the majority, have contracts of employment, have publicly available calendars of their work activity and who are as restrained by their work environment as the rest of us.
Let us see if the every day reality of surviving will provide an enhancement to the democratic processes that we, or at least a majority of us, have signed up to by having our representatives live equally with us.
Do people really get the government they deserve?
In Ireland’s case, I really hope not!
I am sure that the women who were so grossly and continue to be, mistreated, supposedly at our behest, would be excused if they believe this was just another example of a further continuation of their previous situation of exclusion and marginalisation.
The only saving grace is that our international reputation is already on the rocks and apparently little more damage can be done to this, except to delay further any possible salvaging of this.
Regards
Martin Maguire
It is called Deceptive intelligence where the SS servants of the state- TD’s etc use deceptive means to pull the wool over our eyes.
For years they have succeeded, because we are not awake to such psychological tactics being used on us sheeple.
The Magdalenes today, you and me tomorrow, unless we wake up to this evil deceeption of justice V Just US.