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Dear Sir

I have read that the Irish Government proposes legislation that will make it compulsory for every single male in the country over the age of 18 to attend the Lisdoornvarna match-making festival every year that they remain single.

I am appalled and disgusted at the sheer audacity of a government that will move to inflict over 900,000 individuals over one weekend on a small town that only has half a dozen or so bars. I for one would not with to join a queue of about 120,000 waiting for a beer.

It is time that the government awoke to reality and simply gave all of these individuals €5million each that they (the government) have stolen from the people and salted away for personal benefits.

That way these individuals could then go wherever they wanted to in Ireland and spend their money in bars without causing such a problem for the good folk of Lisdoornvarna.

Your sincerely
Mephsto O'Mconnoment
London (Ireland)

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Bethany Home - not included in McAleese Magdalene Home review

Sir,

Minister for Justice, Alan Shatter's October 4th reply to Mary Lou McDonald of Sinn Fein, on not including the Protestant evangelical Bethany Home for unmarried mothers, 'illegitimate' children and female prisoners, within the remit of Martin McAleese's review of state interactions with Roman Catholic Magdalene laundries, is very disappointing.

Again, the treatment of former residents of the Bethany Home is denied official recognition. That was their lot in that institution, in their community, and in Irish society generally. Unexplained deaths of over 200 children buried in unmarked graves therefore remains beyond state responsibility. It was the same in 1939. Then, the Irish state's Deputy Chief Medical Adviser, Winslow Sterling Berry, was concerned only that Bethany maintain a sectarian separation between ostracised unmarried mothers and their children in religiously run institutions. Though it was none of his business, Sterling Berryforced Bethanyto cease admitting Roman Catholics. He suppressed internally expressed criticism of Bethany's standards of care. The institution came first, mothers and children a far distant second.

Children continued to die in unexplained circumstances. Many were ill almost to the point of death, due to neglect in the Home or in external nursings in Wicklow and in Monaghan (mainly). The state was aware that children were exported to England. Children were sent to the Salvation Army, to Barnardo's, to Fegan's Home for Boys and to other inappropriate institutions. All contact has been lost with many of these Irish children and Barnardo's (for one) is not interested in discovering or stating where they ended up.

Bethany Home continued in existence up until 1972. New evidence suggests that it associated itself in the 1960s with the very strange Protestant evangelical Westbank 'orphanage' in Greystones Co Wicklow (that closed in 1998). Some strange aspects of that institution are that few children were ever adopted, some residents stayed until near 30 years of age. In addition, allegations of physical and of sexual abuse have been made (and are the subject of current garda enquiries). Many former Westbank residents were born in the Bethany Home. As in the Bethany Home, the state did not monitor what went on there. Is it because they were Protestants or just poor Protestants?

What exactly do the former Bethany residents have to do to appear on this government's radar? Perhaps they should, like the Justice for Magdalene's organisation, go to the UN Commission on Torture. Members of Fine Gael and Labour supported the Bethany residents last year, including two now occupying ministerial office, Fergus O'Dowd and Kathleen Lynch. It is a pity Alan Shatter and his colleagues will not listen to them.

Yours etc.,
Niall Meehan
Journalism & Media Faculty
Griffith College Dublin, SCR, Dublin 8

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