Fintan O'Toole (fotoole): ❝ While the crimes uncovered in scandal after scandal were committed under the auspices of the church, the State and society are guilty at a minimum of ‘failure of duty, delinquency’.
The problem with the collective response to ever-accumulating revelations of the dark history of the State is that it is all shame and no guilt, all “painful emotion” and no “responsibility for an action or an event”. The Taoiseach’s formulation last week is eloquent in this regard. The shame he said we must feel is an inheritance – and of course we cannot be blamed for what we have inherited.
It may not be too harsh to suggest that this kind of shame is actually closer to its lesser relative, embarrassment. This mad cruelty of the old church-State nexus embarrasses the go-ahead, progressive, enlightened, shiny, cosmopolitan, global Ireland we like to imagine ourselves inhabiting. It is the rat scuttling across the Italian marble floor of our dream home during a dinner party, the smelly old uncle who greets us on the street when we are sauntering with our cool friends.
If shame was any use to us, we would not have 3,784 children homeless by the latest official count, or 220,000 children living in poverty. There are very concrete, immediate and affordable steps that can be taken in the next budget to begin a coherent dismantling of these intolerable conditions. The No Child 2020 campaign by The Irish Times sets them out, and it is hard to find anyone who does not agree with them.
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