Irish ombudsman speaks about Ryan report
In a personal response to the revelations of the Ryan report on abuse in Catholic institutions, Ireland’s ombudsman gave a very forthright response to the release of the Ryan report on institutionalised abuse. Extracts from her speech can be found at The Irish Times site.
She said that the report had shown Irish people as exposed “not as chatty, avuncular scholars but as a repressed, cold hearted, fearful, smugly pious, sexually ignorant and vengeful race of self styled Christians.” She added: “”If things were hidden, they were hidden in clear sight … Judges knew, lawyers knew, teachers knew, civil servants knew, childcare workers knew, Gardaí knew. Not to know was not an option.”
RTE news carried a fairly extensive report on Ms O’Reilly’s speech on its One O’Clock broadcast, but by the time of the evening news it had been nobbled. There was nothing about it on the Eirtel teletext service either, thanks to the rats and the members of Ireland’s home-brewed “Klan”.
