Paul KeenanDear Editor, It is high time that the Irish media employ professional critics who can write objectively, criticise constructively, enlighten their readers and show a degree of intelligence.
“Tell us the truth about the children dumped in Galway’s mass graves” says The Guardian.
“Almost 800 ‘forgotten’ Irish children dumped in septic tank mass grave at Catholic home” – ABC News, Australia.
It never ceases to amaze me, whenever an issue like this surfaces in Ireland, so many 'experts' crawl from out of the woodwork. I do respect freedom of the press, but I don't respect newspapers manipulating the truth in order to take control and subject the Catholic Church in Ireland to a prejudiced hate campaign.
"I never used that word ‘dumped’,” Catherine Corless, a local historian in Co. Galway, tells The Irish Times. “I never said to anyone that 800 bodies were dumped in a septic tank. That did not come from me at any point. They are not my words.”
The story that has emerged from her work was reported in dramatic headlines around the world.
The deaths of these 796 children are a fact and not in doubt. Their numbers are a stark reflection of a period in Ireland when infant mortality in general was very much higher than today, particularly in institutions, where infection spread rapidly. At times during those 36 years the Tuam home housed more than 200 children and 100 mothers, plus those who worked there, according to records Catherine Corless has found. Infant mortality was probably 10 times the present figure.
Hopefully calm will enter the public debate soon and we can have a rational analysis of what happened in Tuam.
Yours etc.,
Bill Curtin,
Carrigaline,
Co. Cork.