Letters to the Editor: Mother and baby homes residents have still received no redress

Derek was in a Protestant institution. That should not be lost sight of in reporting the issue.

Trying to get off the hook, the Church of Ireland asserted recently that it “neither owned nor operated” institutions examined by the Mother and Baby Home Commission of Investigation. That is not accurate. It is disingenuous.

Only Bethany Home was mentioned. Church of Ireland clergy arranged for unwed pregnant women and teenagers to be sent to Bethany Home. Clergy, with their wives and others, managed the institution. Funds were raised in churches and the Church of Ireland community. The same happened in Presbyterian and Methodist churches.

The Roman Catholic Church could argue that it did not own or operate similar institutions, Roman Catholic religious orders did. Who might take that seriously?

There is another institution as significant as Bethany, that received most of Bethany’s assets in 1974. It operated, as one description noted, “in association with the Episcopal Church”, aka the Church of Ireland. The Archbishop of Dublin acted as a guardian, while the organising secretary of the Church of Ireland Moral Welfare Society served as an associate guardian. It considered itself a cut above the Bethany Home, accepting only ‘first-fall’ unmarried mothers.

At a 1946 meeting, chaired by the Archbishop of Tuam, a representative observed: “The promiscuity of the slums causes a lot of trouble.”

The institution had three names, the Magdalen Asylum for Penitent Females, the Church of Ireland Magdalen Home and, from 1979 (after 18th century founder Lady Arabella Denny), Denny House. Until 1959 the institution was run alongside the Magdalen Chapel on Dublin’s Leeson Street.

At a court hearing sanctioning a move to Ellington Road, Representative Church Body solicitors represented the Church of Ireland. The institution was also run in association with the Nursery Rescue Society, which (literally) farmed out ‘foster’ children as child labour.

Though in later years, until closure in 1994, Denny House took in non-Protestant unmarried mothers, its “preference” remained with Protestants. One teenage resident reported repeated unsuccessful attempts in the late 1980s to separate her from her baby. She appears anonymously in the inept Mother and Baby Home Commission of Investigation report being berated by her “local parish priest”. In fact, as confirmed by commission documents, the clergyman was a Church of Ireland canon who arranged for her to be driven to Dublin by a Protestant Adoption Society representative.

The Government should pay the money it promised, now.

Niall Meehan, Journalism & Media Faculty, Griffith College Dublin

Free speech does not mean far-right

I was shocked to read the article on Mattie McGrath — ‘People are starting to take Mattie McGrath more seriously’ (Irish Examiner, January 27). I think your columnist Elaine Loughlin has played the man and not the ball in this case. In the opening paragraph, she writes that ‘he has now taken a dramatic swerve to the right’.

Though I subscribe to the Irish Examiner for the quality, independence, and variety of articles, I cannot let this article pass without comment.

I do not always agree with articles, but this one reeks of a biased influence. It immediately reads of ‘cancel culture’, anti-free speech, and a far-left, woke-style attack.

Within the boundaries of the law we are all entitled to speak out, and for democracy’s sake, we should encourage this.

A lot of decent people in Ireland have an opinion and I cannot say anyone I know is a racist or far-right supporter. They are supporters of their families and neighbours and deserve to be heard and not attacked.

I eventually stopped reading the article. It is not fit for the Irish Examiner. Everybody is allowed a mistake and I hope this is Ms Loughlin’s one.

Name and address with the Editor

Let’s focus on what can be fixed at RTÉ

I hope we will be spared another episode of RTÉ appearing before the Public Accounts Committee because of the Grant Thornton report on Toy Show the Musical.

I appreciate that with a general election beginning to loom large that committee members will not be happy to pass up the exposure to look commanding and assertive in the national media.

The general public has, for some time I suspect, made its judgement on the shambolic state of affairs that pertained in RTÉ for some time and came to a head in 2023.

The €22m loss from the musical is not going to be recovered, so let’s keep the focus on what can be and is being recovered in terms of the corporate soul of the national broadcaster and even more so in terms of supporting the integrity and decency of the workforce at the station.

These are people who have continued to give their best against the background of storm clouds that are still laden with much rage but now need continued calming rather than stoking.

Michael Gannon, St Thomas Sq, Kilkenny City