Irish Government Votes to Cover Up Mass Graves and Human Trafficking

[Cheetodust]

Last night the Dail voted to seal the records of investigation into the mother and baby homes of Ireland for 30 years. Preventing people from accessing the information to find out if they're children/siblings/parents were one of the hundreds of people who died in these homes and were buried in unmarked mass Graves and dumped in septic tanks or were sold off to families around the world for "adoption".

Honestly, the abuses pulled in these places were so disgusting and numerous I'm just going to link the wiki page to the one that got the investigation started:

Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

.

Last night the government had a vote on a bill whether to seal the records for 30 years. The reasoning being that, essentially, if not sealed, due to data protection they would have to be destroyed according to advice from the AG that the Minister for Children is, supposedly, bound by. Many people smarter than me have explained why this is nonsense but the long and short of it is that

1.) Ministers aren't bound by AG advice
2.) The legislation they're citing SHOULD be overruled by GDPR. The people who lived in these homes or who's children died in them should have the right to access that information. There was an interview with one 65 year old man who only wants to know if his siblings are alive and now he has to wait until he is 95 years old to be able to access those records.

Following the vote there was another debate and a vote to add amendments to the bill, ahead of which the minister flat out stated they would not consider any proposed opposition amendments. What followed was a debate for amendments the government had already explicitly said they would vote against before even hearing them.

The Ceann Comhairle (for some levity I'd love it if you guys here would say how you think that's pronounced) had this to say

The purpose of our being here is to attempt to persuade, and that persuasion takes place on both the Government and Opposition sides. If we are to be incapable of persuasion, then the whole system is a bit of a sham

Just to be clear, he is a member of the largest of the three parties in coalition, the three of which, all voted, every single member, to seal the records. He wasn't saying this as an attack on his party and their colleagues, he was saying this as a straight faced defense of the system during a debate where one side opened proceedings by saying "La La La I'm not listening."

Sometimes Ireland gets a lot of credit because we were the first country to legalise gay marriage by popular vote and we were one of the first countries to have an openly gay leader. But for every progressive photo op we get there is a mile long list of the government silencing voices that would require them to be held accountable. This is only a couple of years on from the cervical check scandal. Honestly I'm only posting this because of an absolute feeling of hopelessness living in this country.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Alrighty then...why? To allow the people responsible time to quietly die off in comfort rather than being held accountable?

 

[Cheetodust]

Alrighty then...why? To allow the people responsible time to quietly die off in comfort rather than being held accountable?

Essentially yes. Because of all the nepotism in Irish politics there is likely a massive number of politicians and civil servants either directly involved or having older family members who were.

 

[tstorm823]

Alrighty then...why? To allow the people responsible time to quietly die off in comfort rather than being held accountable?

Well you see, the Irish government paid the Catholic Church to care for its undesired people, and the current status quo is people blaming the Church for that and treating adopting kids out of Ireland as human trafficking, where a thorough account of events would much more largely implicate the government. So long as the status quo remains, people will just blame the Catholic Church, which is a result the government is happy with.

 

[Trunkage]

Let me introduce you to a term - Baby farms.

Baby farming - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Because nothing can make you happier than finding out a really awful thing was VERY common place

 

[Cheetodust]

Well you see, the Irish government paid the Catholic Church to care for its undesired people, and the current status quo is people blaming the Church for that and treating adopting kids out of Ireland as human trafficking, where a thorough account of events would much more largely implicate the government. So long as the status quo remains, people will just blame the Catholic Church, which is a result the government is happy with.

These organisations were run by the church. The decisions made were made by the church. They were lied about to cover for the church during a time when the church ran all of our schools and hospitals and had such a hold on the country it was still illegal to be gay, use condoms or get divorced (during my lifetime). The church sold these children to America families for "adoption" without the consent of the mother's, sometimes going as far as to lieto parents, telling them their children passed away and then selling.

Somehow I doubt you have done more than 4 minutes research into the history of Ireland yet you're still going to claim to know better. Even the Catholic Church have admitted the shame and guilt of the Magdaline laundries in this country. They used unmarried mothers as slave labour and sold children. There is no debate on this from any side, everyone accepts that this happened and was wrong except for you apparently. Even the fucking Pope admits it's a dark part of the churches history.

But you decided to come in here ignorant of the facts to air a grievance from a previous argument I've since given up on because there is literally no point trying to get through to you on this. You refuse to accept that the church carried out unspeakable crimes and should be held accountable for them.

 

[happyninja42]

Alrighty then...why? To allow the people responsible time to quietly die off in comfort rather than being held accountable?

That's pretty much always the reason they seal something for X amount of time, when it's a recent event. To allow anyone involved to avoid accountability by being dead.

 

[BrawlMan]

Cowards. You can hide it as much as you want, but Satan will be seeing you sooner or later.

 

[Agema]

The Ceann Comhairle (for some levity I'd love it if you guys here would say how you think that's pronounced) had this to say

I've no idea about the consonants, but the recommendation I had for multiple vowels was to think of how they'd be pronounced individually, and then cram all those sounds together. So "ea" would be "ee-ah" but as a single syllable. But this is from my English teacher at school who was Scottish, taking us through an Irish play. So who knows.

 

[Trunkage]

Just going to point out that if this was shut down in the 50s, the youngest people working there are probably in their 90s

 

[happyninja42]

Just going to point out that if this was shut down in the 50s, the youngest people working there are probably in their 90s

And I'm sure they don't want to spend their final years in a prison, so they push it forward. I mean there really isn't any other reason for sealing stuff like this, especially when it's already out there. I've always suspected the extended timeframe is to gamble against someone being really fucking old, or possibly allowing for the age of the victims to expire as well, so that nobody's left alive to file any claims or grievances.

That or to protect the children of those responsible from any secondary reprisals.

 

[tstorm823]

These organisations were run by the church. The decisions made were made by the church. They were lied about to cover for the church during a time when the church ran all of our schools and hospitals and had such a hold on the country it was still illegal to be gay, use condoms or get divorced (during my lifetime).

What you mean to say is the church built you schools and hospitals that otherwise didn't exist, the politicians used shallow appeals to theocracy to gain power, and then dumped their problems onto the Church and acted as though that was supporting the Church, and then scapegoated religion wherever bad things were found to happen.

 

[Schadrach]

The Ceann Comhairle (for some levity I'd love it if you guys here would say how you think that's pronounced)

Since they basically chew their language and spit it out half digested, probably something like Key-awn Core-lay (the "mhai" is obviously silent and the "e" sounds like the a in ladle). In other words, as unreasonable of a way to pronounce it as I could think of that isn't wholly unrelated to the letters as written.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

Since they basically chew their language and spit it out half digested, probably something like Key-awn Core-lay (the "mhai" is obviously silent and the "e" sounds like the a in ladle). In other words, as unreasonable of a way to pronounce it as I could think of that isn't wholly unrelated to the letters as written.

I feel like you're giving it too much credit, that is clearly a two syllable phrase.

OT: I'm not surprised at a government trying to memory hole things. That seems to be pretty standard as far as crimes go.

 

[Silvanus]

I've no idea about the consonants, but the recommendation I had for multiple vowels was to think of how they'd be pronounced individually, and then cram all those sounds together. So "ea" would be "ee-ah" but as a single syllable. But this is from my English teacher at school who was Scottish, taking us through an Irish play. So who knows.

I think that's presuming an English (or Roman?) reading of the individual vowels themselves.

For example, Taoiseach (the Irish term for the equivalent position of the Prime Minister) is pronounced quite like "Tee-shuck".

 

[Cheetodust]

Since they basically chew their language and spit it out half digested, probably something like Key-awn Core-lay (the "mhai" is obviously silent and the "e" sounds like the a in ladle). In other words, as unreasonable of a way to pronounce it as I could think of that isn't wholly unrelated to the letters as written.

You're actually not far wrong. Roughly it would be k-yow-n (said as one syllable) cower-luh (or depending on accent corr-luh) . Mh makes a w sound and Bh makes a v sound in Irish. I'm not particularly patriotic, I think it's a pity what happened to our language but I have no strong feelings about preserving it but I do enjoy it's oddities.

 

[Cheetodust]

What you mean to say is the church built you schools and hospitals that otherwise didn't exist, the politicians used shallow appeals to theocracy to gain power, and then dumped their problems onto the Church and acted as though that was supporting the Church, and then scapegoated religion wherever bad things were found to happen.

Ok man. You do you.

 

[Cheetodust]

Just going to point out that if this was shut down in the 50s, the youngest people working there are probably in their 90s

A big issue is still who knew what after the fact. The people who worked there might be dead or near it but did anyone else know about mass child graves and corpses being dumped in septic tanks? Did anyone know that children had been sold to families in America. Were there blocked attempts to investigate this previously and if so by who? Philomena Lee is one notable figure in all this who was vocal for years about what happened to her. If we all knew this happened why did an investigation take so long?

 

[Elijin]

I mean, if you don't cover up mass graves, they smell pretty bad.

 

[Silvanus]

Ok man. You do you.

For some reason, I'm reminded of Ebenezer Scrooge rhetorically asking the charity-workers, "Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons?", when they say that the poor are not being adequately treated.