We need your help now
Support from readers like you keeps The Journal open.
You are visiting us because we have something you value. Independent, unbiased news that tells the truth. Advertising revenue goes some way to support our mission, but this year it has not been enough.
If you've seen value in our reporting, please contribute what you can, so we can continue to produce accurate and meaningful journalism. For everyone who needs it.
Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
By continuing, you are indicating that you accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
ONE IN TEN thirteen-year-olds reported having consumed alcohol – 12% of which said that they drank on at least a monthly basis, according to new research.
The research, which comes a Growing Up in Ireland report, is based off of interviews conducted with parents and their children that were born in 2008. The interviews took place in 2021/22.
Over 6,000 children took part in the study.
The cohort surveyed, who were born in the year 2008, marked a 6% decrease in the number of young people who reported having an alcoholic drink, compared to the previous cohort, born in 1998, recorded at the same age.
Young people who had parents who reported binge-drinking on at least a monthly basis were more likely to have tried alcohol, and young people in one-parent households were over twice as likely to have tried alcohol, with 20% in one-parent households having drank, and 9% of those living with two parents.
The cohort of 2008 also saw a reversal of the previous reported trend of boys having been more likely to have had an alcoholic drink at the age of thirteen, as girls were reported to have a higher likelihood.
The research also found that almost one in ten thirteen-year-olds have tried vaping.
The likelihood of 13-year-olds having tried a cigarette was three times higher if they had a parent who had smoked, the report said, at 6% versus 2%.
The report found that nearly 10% of 13-year-olds had tried vaping, which was more common than experimenting with smoking, which was reported to be 3%. Young people who had a parent who vaped or smoked were more likely to have tried vaping, at 15%.
Girls were more likely to have vaped than boys, with 10% of girls and 7% of boys reporting that they had vaped at some point in time.
Over half of 13-year-olds surveyed thought that vaping was either equally or more harmful than smoking, while 24% thought it was less harmful.
Just over one-third (34%) of 13-year-olds surveyed reported having been excluded by their friends or classmates, while 33% had been subjected to name-calling or hurtful comments.
A total of 30% of young people surveyed reported having been pushed, shoved or slapped.
The figures come as a report published yesterday by the Department of Education Inspectorate found that approximately one-third of post-primary students feel that they don’t belong in school, or feel that they can’t express themselves.
Minister for State at the Department of Health, Colm Burke, said that the new research from the Growing Up in Ireland study provides useful information that will help with targeting health policies at “those who particularly need support”.
“It also provides us with the information we need to prevent risks and to support those who are in danger from substance abuse,” he said.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Any illegal acts should be fully investigated without prejudice and anyone found to be responsible should feel the full force of the law regardles of age,title etc,we need to face the past,address it and move forward never allowing such things happen again.
Every one of those nuns has blood on her hands…80 or 90 she should face the rest of her life behind bars.
Maybe all those calling for blood. Should do some maths first.
Those in their 70s born from 1947 onwards age of entry into a convent about 20. So from 1967 onward. Those in their 80s entry from 1957 onward. And that’s only if they went straight from home into the convent. Take in time spent in convent before being sent out to the mother and baby homes. And then the evidence that points to these discovered remains being from the 1920s 1930s and 1940s. The order has to answer to the inquiry but the individuals responsible are roasting in the fires of hell.
The remains were from the 50′s. Also there are people alive that can testify to crimes committed. Putting dead babies in a disused septic tank isn’t the only crime
But Enda said it was all of our faults ??
@Paul O Mahony:
But Enda…..is a tool.
@Sean your right but we have the modern version in full force with all the children who are living in cramped hotel rooms and John isn’t too worried about it. Where’s he been all week?
@ mary Hes been hiding like the rest of those gombeens,ducking and diving I expect.
Some statement GameOver.
Mary. The big difference between the times. Social welfare.
Read this yesterday. I haven’t read any detailed reports so don’t know how accurate this is
http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/rush-to-moralise-over-tuam-has-run-ahead-of-the-facts-1.3002786
@Sean Beinead: They might interview Denis O brien about the Moriarty Tribunal while they are at it, even though mention of his name on here seems to be blocked
@Mary Murphy:
He’s a minister. He should not be coming out and making statements asking others to do this and that. he should be telling/demanding/commanding from the cabinet table.
This rant is for his own ego and PR to look good in the eyes of his voters.
Thanks, Father Lavbeer.
Yeah well done Brendan. Only, Tuam is just the beginning of this. There are more recent mass graves you can be sure of that. Any nun with any knowledge of these would do well now to come out.
@Dave O Keeffe: too bad a) the men who impregnated, then abandoned them, didn’t look after them, b) too bad didn’t either, instead of dumping them on the nuns, with little Statte aid c) too bad their families didn’t pay for proper burial for their own daughters children, in their own family graves.
All in all, it was far cheaper and convenient to dump the problem on the nuns, and let them bury the tragic remains.
Even now, scapegoat elderly nuns who did their best, without aid, and lived frugal, selfless lives themselves is SO convenient to unload our guilt on.
Just look how the pro aborts Halligan/Coppinger/Brid Smith and co, now mounting the Tuam babies tragic bandwagon, replete with “moral outrage” while advocating that TODAYs babies can be aborted to death, and dumped as “med waste” in the trash, parade their hypocrisy.
Because the bravely Church opposes babies being aborted to death NOW, pro aborts who want abortion here, use any means to smear.
Boot these Tuam babies bandwagon jumpers out of office, and expose their own double standards.
I’m not a great fan of Halligan, but he is spot on here. Perhaps there *was* a series of unlikely events in Tuam that caused the death rate to multiply. In this case, surely the Order would be more than willing to exonerate themselves?
@George Salter:
You could take that view but the best case situation in that situation is the nuns were beyond negligent in the care of children, but that still doesn’t explain why the dumped the body’s into a septic tank. They had something to hide here.
I was giving them enough rope to hang themselves…
@Barry Somers: why didn’t the mothers families or boyfriends, take their dead children home to be buried with their people ?
didn’t want to spend the money on the funeral, perhaps, so handier to just dump it on the nuns, like the simplistic blame is being dumped now ?
The UN should called in just like any other country where there are mass graves and the church and nuns brought to a court in the Hague
@dangermouse: so, should the mass graves at the abortion mills which pro aborts like Halligan/Brid Smith/C Daly advovate for Ireland, be exhumed, investigated also ?
Damn right, I agreed. These women have gone on and lived their life with what I’m guessing no remorse!! Sooner rather than later, the government take too long on important issues
Were the nuns that brainwashed by the Catholic Church that they thought honestly thought they were doing gods work or were they sick sadistic wicked women without an ounce of empathy.hearing stories of women being refused pain relief during and post childbirth because they were told they’d to suffer for their sins,I’d pick the latter
@Alan b..: You would be 100% correct in picking the latter .. from personal experience.
Well considering Mother Theresa was of the opinion that rather than give simple painkillers to those dying, that they should suffer to bring them closer to God, and she has now been made a saint, I think we can assume that the RCCs view is that people should suffer.
Only if you’re poor
@Stephen Byrne: Yeah Theresa changed her mind on that one when it came to her being sick. Only the best medical treatment would suffice then.
@Anita Fleming: yes.. like keeping the 8th to prevent TODAYS innocent unborn babies being aborted to death by the pro abort Halligan/Brid Smith lobby, now busy jumping on the Tuam bandwagon.
@Stephen Byrne: Mother Teresa worked tirelessly, with her RC sisters, amongst the poorest, In India, to relieve their pain, and all around the world, including in Dublin, for no pay.
Thats her impressive, hands on, track record, and that of her RC nursing oprder of care-givers, still doing that with mothers and babies. Thats her record ?
How does yours compare ?
@Alan b..: the RCC Church has done much in this country, and world wide, to raise people from poverty….
far more than you, or the trendy, anti 8th pro abortion brigade, are EVER likely to do.
Well Mick that’s just a complete fabrication as if you even took the time to listen to Mother Theresa own words you would know that she didn’t believe in giving pain relief to the sick and dying as she said it brought them closer to God. Funnily enough she herself availed of the best medical care and treatment money could buy. As for my own record I have never insisted on anyone suffering needlessly and when my own grandmother who was deeply religious was dying of cancer and in great pain I didn’t stop her from getting morphine to ease the pain in order for her to be ‘closer to god’.
@Stephen Byrne: No, it isn’t.
Mother Teresa and her Order of nuns, live simple , frugal lives and she, as they NOW do, dedicate themselves selflessly, to relieving the suffering of the poorest of the poor in Calcutta and elsewhere.
She, and they, give their lives to standing with, and helping the poorest – including among Dublin’s underprivelidged, and the slums of New York. Thats HER legacy.
Neither Mother Teresa or her Sisters get personally rich, doing this. The same can’t be said of our political/media well salaried pro abortion professors, journalists and politicians.
We will wait a long time before the glib, pro abortion “smoked salmon” trendy lefties in our media, Labour party or Sinn Fein sound -bite merchants, EVER do one ounce of her good work with the poorest.
Pro abortion, anti Catholic bigots hate her a) she is Catholic ,
and b) because she opposed abortion babies to death, and therefore, her reputation HAS to be trashed by you, and your likes.
“If ???? a criminal investigation is warranted “
How is it not automatically a criminal investigation if a pile of bodies are found in a tank??
@Niamh Kenneally:
That’s the 6 million dollar question.
If any remains, especially a babies, was found on a private property, there would be an immediate criminal investigation.
@Niamh Kenneally: it is not and was not a criminal investigation because of the involvement of the Roman Catholic Church.
Good question Niamh
@Niamh Kenneally: So, when will u be starting the exhumation/investion/prosecution at the Halligan/Coppinger commercial abortion mills them ?
Double standard hypocrisy.
@Shakka1244: so, should we start exhuming the remains from the abortion clinics then ?
The abortion clinics that Halligan and his pro abortion, anti 8th mates want brought here ? Exhume and investigate there now ?
British medical authorities recently closed some MARIE STOPES clinics for irregularities.
@Niamh Kenneally: …or inside one of the abortion mills, where babies are cut, poisoned, suctioned to death, or left to die alone…..and their body parts sold for profit, or dumped, or burnt.
Too bad, our lying pro abortion media NEVER tell you that, nor will the pro abortion TDs now convulsing about Tuams sad, babies.
The Germans are still prosecuting people for their role in the Holocaust. That ended earlier than 1962. Of course they should be investigated, and they are probably not alone.
@David Welsh: should the fathers of the children, or their families, who dumped them on the nuns, with little State aid, be prosecuted too ?
You make a very fair point about responsibility. I very much want the full picture to be painted, and the stories of the men (who have been as silent as the Church) is clearly part of that. Many have a lot to answer for. The point about the Guards is a narrower one about criminal responsibility. If there is reasonable suspicion any of these “fathers” committed a crime then yes they should be investigated.
@Mick Rick Jones: @Mick Rick Jones: dear rick, with respect, I don’t think your posts here are appropriate. Abortion in Ireland is illegal under most circumstances. The people posting here are asking for the same justice system to apply the rule of law when investigating the horrific findings in tuam. Your views are important but perhaps you should review your posts with some of you piers and ask for advice on the best place to highlight your grievances. I don’t think the victims in this situation and those pushing for the judiciary to intervene would feel that you fully empathise with their feelings. This is a horrific find and requires us to focus on healing and understanding. The fight to maintain abortion laws is perhaos best brought up in another forum.
This order of nuns owns the most exclusive and most expensive hospitals catering for the wealthy. They should be made to pay for their abuse – in cash. However, seeing as this and the former government covered for the religious organisations and let them off the hook, there is little chance of anything happening.
An Independent TD! Where’s FG/FF? Want change people get onto your TD and ask them where the hell they were yesterday. We owe it to those children. We owe it to Ireland.
@john Appleseed: FF and FG need to ingratiate themselves with the staunch Roman Catholic electorate.
@john Appleseed: and ask your TDs also, how many babies have been saved from being aborted by the 8th , since 1983 (estimate ; 200,000ish) , because the 8th NOW prohibits commercial abortion clinics from operating on Irish streets ?
And if he/she will support keeping the 8ths protection , for that good reason ?
And if dead aborted babies bodies, should be incinerated for heating, dumped as “med waste” in trash, or dold by Planned Parenthood for body parts profit, shows “respect and dignity 2 to those babies ?
They’re still searching for the holocaust perpetrators? Surely genocide on this scale warrants it?
@Keith Murray: So, will we expose and investigate the ongoing TODAY genocide on the unborn, being waged in the abortion mills which pro abortion Halligan/Smith/C Daly etc want for Ireland, after they destroy the 8ths protection of the Unborn babies in their mothers womb ?
Anti 8th pro abortion politicians, Halligan, Smith, Zappone should stop using the Tuam tragedy to try and silence opposition to their pro abortion agenda.
I bet there were no malnourished nuns in that Tuam home!!!
@Ally
Some of them were big fat heifers and the ugliness was often in body and soul!
@Ally Collyer: Most pro abortion TDs now hypocritically crying croc tears on Tuams sad tragedy for their anti 8th agenda, look well nourished too.
Too bad, the aborted babies who die, as a result of their pro abortion rhetoric, don’t get the same chance to live.
@Matt Beaumont: not half as ugly as your stupid, ugly comments.
Anti Catholic bigotry, much because the RCC bravely, now defends babies lives in the womb from being aborted to death, is endemic in the well funded (from abroad) pro abortion lobby….as you can see.
Why was it not done the moment it was known??? It takes a politician to say it NOW?
Good luck with that, no one is ever held accountable in this country, anyone who went to school in the 60s_70s knows how evil Nuns and Christian Brothers were , for far to long the Church had to much power in this country and even to this day the legacy of their teaching still go on, its strange that when these truths come out most of those responsible are dead, well if what they believe in is true I hope theres plenty of red hot pokers to go around.
I went to a Christian Brothers school in the ’70s and it was a mixture of lay teachers and brothers. Our French teacher was a holier than thou little runt who insisted on prayers before the start of her class. One classmate point blank refused to participate and she approached him one occasion to take him up on it. ‘I don’t believe in god’, he responded. This knocked her sideways a bit and after a dagger-eyed pause she produced the phone number of a local counseling service and suggested he needed urgent help. For the next French class no-one stood up for her prayers and everyone the class asked for counseling. Everyone’s parents were written to threatening expulsion. Needless to say that the parents concurred with the school and our little revolution was quashed. Catholic schools, don’t dare mess with us.
I went to RC schools in the 60s and 70s both in the UK and later in rural Ireland, i thought the RC church was brutal and invasive in the UK but by god nothing compared to the evil nastiness I witnessed here. My sister-in-law had the misfortune of being left-handed, the nuns used to tie her left hand behind her and forced to write with her right hand as being left-handed was viewed by them as the sign of the devil.
@molly coddled: my left hand was badly fractured and left both deformed and unusable by a nun because I insisted on writing with my left hand.
I’m not surprised Tony they were brutal and pure evil personified, the dreadful thing is they more than likely enjoyed inflicting pain especially on children, my sister-in-law was only five when this was done to her. Hope you came out the other side strong regardless of the horrors inflicted upon you.
@molly coddled: I can still give the bent fingers of my left hand to the Roman Catholic Church and to all abusive power. The odd thing is that I lost any sense of fear afterwards. My first act of retaliation a few months later was to call the nuns magpies. I was badly thrashed and then isolated on my own. None of the kids had anything to do with me except for bullying.
Later a female lay teacher took me aside and kindly tried to teach me to hold my tongue. It was not possible.
One day she made a bad mistake. She tried to be nice to me in front of the other kids. She offered me sweets. I contemptuously refused the sweets and then it was easy afterwards. No one touched me or challenged me. It was as if I was invisible. I was left alone. Even the “bad boys” left me alone. The refusal of sweets in a poor area was perhaps seen as ultra extreme, I think.
Today I’m strong and self reliant. Nothing affects me. It left no legacy. I lived and I have no nightmares or worries. But I have no doubt how awful it was for others. I was lucky; others were not.
What happened to you was despicable, only your strength of character and resilient nature made you stronger Tony, not them or their actions. They probably branded you as brazen or insolent. I often went home with red welts on the palms of my hands because i couldn’t for the life of me recite their catechism verbatim. It f*kced me up big time for years after, now i don’t give a rat’s behind.
@molly coddled: thank you. Others suffered vastly far more me and so many died.
@Tony Daly: died ? so when do you plan to bring your evidence to the Garda ?
@Tony Daly: Yes, you repaid her “kindness” well, didn’t you ?
@Slim Browne: nuns and brothers provided free or very cheap secondary and primary education for the poor, working class and under privelidged of Ireland, when the State or no one else would. They lifted us up by our boostraps, when the Protestant Ascendency dominated us, deliberately keeping Catholics poor and ignorant. They educated free out fathers and grandfathers, who otherwise would have been out on the road at 12 or 13, digging ditches.
They built schools and hospitals. They sheltered abandoned, unmarried mothers from giving birth in the field, as they were called.
They get little thanks for this sacrifice NOW, from our modern, secularised, anti Catholic bigotted generation of spolit, over privelidged, secular, commentators currently pontificating about the ’30, 40s and 50s hardships, and what a much better job they WOULD have done.
These commentators now sit idly by, quaffing their Capucino or Latte, churching bashing smugly, while ignoring condoning or advocating the abortion to death of babies TODAY, NOW.
@Slim Browne: yeah, and I bet they schooled you for free, or next to it, and you gladly took it, now whinging it about it……..
just like the begrudgers in Tuam who never paid a cent to support the women they impregnated but who ran, as did the girls families, dumping the problem on poorly resourced nuns to cope with, and little State help.
Who sheltered these abandoned women ? when no one else would ? nuns.
A non sectarian factual examination, taking into account balancing the sincere efforts of the nuns with the then dismissive Victorian attitude of the families towards pregnancy outside marriage back then, should be made
Tom – so you have read David Quinn’s column today and swallowed it. This is not about pregnancy, this is about dumping dead babies and children into a sewage pit.
@Tom Molloy: the Roman Catholic Church informed our morality and judgmentalism. Our “Victorian values” were inculcated into us by an extreme and fundamentalist Roman Catholicism from Maynooth, which combined the severe and dogmatic ultramontane tradition with a highly sexually condemnatory Jansensist tradition.
The most unhealthy, toxic and severe Roman Catholicism was the strand which thrived in Ireland from the 1850s until 15 years after Vatican II
Truly we were an accursed nation, and especially cursed by severe and implacable Roman Catholicism.
I missed that. Where can I read it. (Babies thrown in pit #fakenews )
Girls who were victims of British Victorian prudish values were helped by Catholic nuns.
@Tom Molloy: separated from their babies, babies who were taken off them and sold or neglected. Some help!
Tom Molloy – are you the one and only Tom Newman, he who defends absolutely ever horror the Catholic Church has ever committed? The same one who comments on every David Quinn and Breda O Brian article defending the church and cheerleading for them?
@Paul Fahey: ..oh right, like they get dumped, or burned, or sold, in the abortion mills which Halligan and other pro abortion TDs want here, EVERY DAY…
No moral outrage for those dead, aborted babies…or respect for their remains…
too bad the men who fathered the tragic Tuam babies, or the families, didn’t pay to bury their children properly.. with respect… easier to dump them on the nuns then, wasn’t it, …like dumping the blame now…to salve Tuams collective guilt…
@Tony Daly: TODAY, the Catholic Church opposes TODAYs babies being aborted to death, poisoned, cut apart, incinerated for hospital heating, trafficked by Planned Parenthood (whose Irish arm the IFPA attacks the 8ths protection of unborn). or left to die alone in abortion clinics, in the trash.
Compared to Tuam, sad as it was, and is, the abortion industrys viciousness is horrendous — and of course, the pro abortion, anti 8th TDs now mouthing about Tuam, ignore all abortion horrors, and want to bring them here.
Catholic Nuns, Priests, laypeople, and many other good people , bravely oppose these abortion horrors. Do you ?
Anti Catholic bigotry means using any past church failings, to try silence Catholic opposition to abortion. Wise up to the pro aborts agenda.
Totally agree.
If you thought you had any light to shed on this issue you would be straight down to the Garda station to help out. You wouldn’t wait to be asked and you wouldn’t need to have a Minister calling for it. This Catholic faith which felt like part of the fabric of the country now feels like a virus which has infected us. We need to talk about removing it from any active role in our state and we need to levy fair taxation on religious property.
@Simeon: excellent and true comment.
@Simeon: Anti Catholic bigotry.
Where are you now, and your likes, when Catholic religious and lay people, are daily STILL helping poor and destitute people, while you pontificate on the Ireland of 50 years ago. Enjoying a skinny Latte perhaps ?
Done much social work with the poor YOURSELF lately ? Joined the St V de PAUL perhaps, to help the poor ?
I always thought that the gardai as an arm of the State were complicit it how the Catholic church ruled over Ireland.
@Chris Kirk: it was a Roman Catholic Garda force, a Roman Catholic Legal Profession, a Roman Catholic Government and Roman Catholic medical profession as well as Roman Catholic Hierarchy which exercised its all pervasive influence.
@Tony Daly: Is it any wonder that Northern Unionists don’t want anything to do with a united Ireland. They haven’t gone away you know.
Thanks to religious maniac DeValera bowing to the Catholic Church and that devils spawn McQuaid Ireland was brainwashed on an almost industrial scale for generations, at last we see what this has done to the country and how its development was held back by these charlatens. Sadly do many innocent children had to suffer before we saw the light!
Chris do some research. One of the worst home scandals on the island occurred North of the border at Kincora. Read up on it. The Bethany Church of Ireland home dumped 227 children in unmarked graves. Protestant homes let children starve, sent many for adoption to the US and trafficked others north of the border. If you think that this problem is purely a Catholic one or ROI one then you are listening to too many of the bigoted comments on here from posters with other agendas. This problem was widespread across the island, spanned the religious divide and state employees north and south were complicit.
@Gus Sheridan: Innocent children in their mothers are killed, their bodies aborted, dumped and trashed — NEVER any protest from the anti Catholic bigots, you will notice, NOW., TODAY.
Meanwhile, they shed cheap, crocodile tears fot Tuam 50 years ago.
The RCC bravely, with others, opposes abortion to death of the innocent. You don’t.
Mass graves uncovered and state cover-up…statements should be taken at the very least and promptly, before there’s more cover-up
@wyer2wyer: the cover up has been in progress fir a long time. The incriminating evidence is long disposed of. The Roman Catholic Church is not accountable. It is and always has been above the law.
Dear John the best thing you could do would be to ask your government colleagues there as to how they behaved over the decades with this matter. Since the establishment of the state 3 parties have ruled us give or take a few interlopers now and then. They knew full well what was going on . An inconvenient truth they were happy to foster out and turn a blind eye to. And when the next GE swings around all the outraged Facebook posters, the red and green journal thumbers and the twitter hashtaggers will march into the polling booth and mark for tweedledum or tweedledee again. We truly get what we deserve.
Can’t see anything about mother and baby homes on their website: http://www.bonsecours.ie/history1
According to this propaganda, they are all angels.
@shakka. It beggars belief that they’re still allowed to run maternity hospitals and people still pay privately to use them. As I’ve said before it’s akin to having a Joseph mengele centre for the study of twins.
@Anne Marie Devlin: it is a firm of snobbery for the better classes.
@Anne Marie Devlin: too bad, your “concern” doesn’t extend to condemning todays unborn babies being aborted to death, dismembered and dumped in the trash, or sold for body parts, in your Mengele style PP abortion clinics.
The abortion clinics which pro aborts like HALLIGAN, C DALY, ZAPPONE, B SMITH want the 8Th removed to facilitate abortion on demand here.
Vote pro abortion hypocrites, crying the croc tears for Tuams sad babies, out of office.
Many RC nuns (Sisters for Life) bravely protest unborn tiny, innocent babies being aborted to death.
You don’t. Anti Catholic, secularist bigots, like yoy, NEVER do.
Interviews should be a foregone conclusion. The days of religious orders acting with impunity are long gone.
@Emachine: should the fathers and families be interviewed also ? Shouls the nuns have left the abandoned women to have their babies, in th 1950s, out in the bogs, fields and woods at Tuam ?
And what exactly are the pro aborts like Halligan/C Daly, so mouthy and opinionated on Tuams babies of yesterday, doing NOW for babies threatened by being aborted to death ?
Trying to destroy the 8th, their one protection, thats what.
We hear NO impassioned protests for the lost, aborted, dumped babies of the abortion mill form them.
The RC Church, Catholics, with other good people, are the only ones defending TODAYs babies threatened with abortion to death. No media/political outcry there for those dead, incinerated babies, torn from their mothers womb.
Halligan and the pro abortion TDs, opportunistically jump on the sad, Tuam bandwagon. Shame.
Bandwagon hopper.
@Emmet O’Keeffe:yes I think halligan and martin are just chasing votes….
Any opportunities to get your face in the papers halligan, wonder where he was when the topic was meant to be discussed in the Dail chamber? Had to be abandoned because only a mere hand full of them turned up. Hypocrisy at its best
Why do the police need to be even told?!? It’s their duty and job..
I think that a Truth and Reconcilation forum along the lines in South Africa would work best.
The Roman Catholic Church has destroyed most of the evidence, too much time has elapsed, most records are gone, the perpetrators are dead and every Roman Catholic lawyer, Garda and Judge in the Country will come to the aid of the powerful and highly influential Roman Catholic Church.
It is too late for Justice, reparation, co,pensation or mercy or decency. All that’s left is that the fully story be told without consequence.
When was the Roman Catholic Church ever properly accountable in Ireland?
Leave it to John Halligan to come up with the silly ideas. Any surviving nuns are probably in their late 80′s. What’s done was done, it’s the Government & the Church who should take the blame!
@Liam John Bradshaw:
It doesn’t matter how old you are if you are guilty of a crime. We are talking about some very sadistic sickos here. Because they managed to find refuge in the Catholic church, they should be immune?
I agree but I’m not sure they were sickos finding refuge but intelligent girls who were young and impressionable who were moulded by an institution to do cruel unmentionable things.
@Liam
Exactly the mindset that made these atrocities possible in the first place!
Thanks for confirming that nothing has really changed!
Poor Paddy will always point the finger at someone else.
@Melissa O’Callaghan: Couldn’t have been that intelligent if they fell for Catholicism.
They were female and what were their choices at that time. Not forgetting family pressures. What they did sickens me to the core and the same with the priesthood and sexual abuse but they knew no better, they were institutionalised. Didn’t they loose their identity when they joined the Nuns in the same way they the mothers lost their names. It’s a very powerful controlling tool, removing your identity and stripping away at what is right and wrong. This is why the institutions of schools and hospitals need to separate from their control as “a cod rots from the head”.
@Melissa O’Callaghan: the Roman Catholic Church severely constrained the choices for young girls and young women.
@Shakka1244: If you weren’t around in those days you wouldn’t have an idea how towns in Ireland worked. If a young girl was pregnant she brought disgrace to her family. In a lot of cases it was a family member or relation who impregnated the young girl, the local parish priest would insist on the girl be shipped off to one of these slave houses. Her child was sold off for money to other family’s with money.
How can someone pick on an old Nun in her 80′s/90′s years & put them in prison? The real perpetrators were their senior ordained Nuns addressed as Mother, Do you believe that the Government knew nothing about these slave houses for girls & the people who sent them there were the Priests in our towns , the very people who raped our children down through the years. It’s been covered up for years & it was brought to the attention to our Governments over the years. Lets hope the real truth comes to light.
@Liam John Bradshaw: and the fact you dont think the poor aul nuns (who committed an atrocity in this case) should be jailed is complicit in this problem. Stop apologising for our diseased regime
@Melissa O’Callaghan: why did not the Tuam men who got the mothers pregnant, and their Tuam families NOT look after these poor women ?
Dumping them on the nuns, who coped then, with very limited State help, was a handier, “we’re off the hook” option for Irish society, wasn’t it ?
Halligans hypocrisy is nauseous.
His own Labour socialist mates were in Government part of the time, when Tuam’s nuns were coping with our social problems, with little State aid.
@Rob Cahill: anti Catholic bigot.
No one will ever be intervied never ming charged with what went on in these homes around the country. It wasn’t just nuns, priests, who knew what was going on in the homes but all the do gooders in the community knew. Not 1 man who got the girls pregnant was ever asked to stand up & take responsibility. It was always the girls fault. Lock the girls away & treat them like dirt. Good old ireland
@bings: We abort the same babies to death TODAY, and dump their bodies in “medical wastr” trash, or burn, or sell them.
Halligan, Coppinger, Zappone and other Tuam band wagon jumpers condone these present day atrocities, and want the 8th destroyed, to import the commercial abortion horrors here.
If you look at the bon secour website or facebook pages there is no mention of this scandal and these people still make money off their private hospitals.
@Joseph Caulfield: Nobody gets kidnapped into any hospital. So don’t go, and forego the excellent care given there.
Back then the nuns, in Tuam and elsewhere, with minimal State support, took in pregnant girls, when their men, families and everyone else, turned their backs on them.
Maybe, you’d prefer they had their babies, like poor Ann Lovett, in the bogs and fields. Wise up.
The Halligan/Coppinger/Brid Smith sanctimouious hypocrisy on Tuam, while advocating abortion of babies, is mind blowing.
@Joseph Caulfield: if you look at any pro abortion, anti 8th TDs web site either, you won’t see ANYTHING about aborted babies being cut, scalded, poisoned or suctioned to death, or their bodies parts sold for profit, dumped or burnt for heating.
You won’t read this in our pro abortion media either. Pro aborts ALWAYS want to suppress and censor the gory, bloody facts of abortion — because they want to introduce it here, by destroying the 8ths protection.
Our media is largely pro abortion biased, as we see from the NUJ banners at pro abortion marches.
I seriously doubt that there is any realistic prospect of An Garda Siochana interviewing any nuns. The window of opportunity is long since closed. The Roman Catholic Church has escaped unscathed.
The Roman Catholic Church is exclusively devoted to its own institutional self protection. It does not practice morality.
Don’t stop there politicians ex Garda wake up these nuns and brothers could not of done this without these s.um bags turning a blind eye
Excellent point David. It’s easy, and correct, to blame the nuns but to think that politicians, gardai, doctors, state professionals oversaw this process and without doubt turned a blind eye to, sanctioned even, the goings on at all of these institutions is criminal. Where is the outcry for justice, to investigate all of these state employed professionals who were undoubtedly complicit in this scandal?
@Sean @114: thesecwere nkt the immediate and direct perpetrators but they were all Roman Catholics and Roman Catholicism is culpable.
No they weren’t Tony. There were many Church of Ireland and state run homes were barbaric abuse took place. Bethany and Evoca were Church of Ireland. Kincora was state run. Amazing the way you keep bringing up the Catholic Church and ignore others who are equally culpable. You clearly have an anti-Catholic only agenda.
@Sean @114: the cruelty of others does not redeem or excuse the Roman Catholic Church which was unique in operating baby farms and selling babies for huge profit.
Nobody is excusing anyone Tony. I’m merely pointing out your misinformation. They were not ‘all’ Roman Catholic. In fact very far from it. I know your bigotry has made you blind to this but it’s important that your ill informed comments are challenged.
@Sean @114: anti Catholic bigotry runs thru’ much commentary on the Taum sad tragedy, as does hypocrisy.
As with Savita sad case, pro abortion, secularist, anti Catholic bigots will desperately use any scandal to silience the RC Church, and others, brave opposition to the secularist abortion on demand, anti 8th agenda.
Pro abort Halligan/Smith/C Daly et al, all hypocritically cry the crocodile tears for Tuams sad mothers and babies, while, in the next breath, advocating abortion of todays babies.
Cynical double standard hypocrisy.
It’s too late for criminal investigation. The Roman Catholic Church has got away with its mass predatory and exploitative behaviour.
The office of the Attorney General, the office of the DPP, an Garda Siochana, the Judiciary, the Ministers for Justice, the Taoiseach and every influential organ in society, especially the politicians, are influenced and controlled by the institution of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland.
@Tony Daly: Rubbish. The people elect the Government and politicians.
How about an investigation into how Planned Parenthood sells aborted baby body parts TODAY, NOW for its profits, which it uses to facilitate and fund the pro abortion lobby here.
Any statement from its affiliate, the pro abortion anti 8th IFPA, on its funding and links to PP, the aborted baby body parts sellers ?
Any comment from HALLIGAN/COPPINGER/BRID SMITH or assorted other pro abortion Tuam babies hand-wringers ?
The RCC Churchs, and other churches and groups, protection of todays unborn babies, is both noble and courageous.
You won’t see Halligan and his pro abortion mates protesting aborted babies being dumped in the trash can, or sold for profit, or burnt for heating. Very silent there.
Money made illegally,all assets must be seized.thats the law anyway,and applies to all citizens.
They should be given the full weight of our justice system, which is no weight at all. No on a serious note, these beats should be jailed dont give me your ageism or apologies
They should also interview Michael Noonan concerning GRACE
Totally agree with this TD, now is the time to investigate these dodgy religious orders, and yes, even if some of them are very old, they were responsible for so much misery and need to be punished both financially and personally.
This is probably an overreaction, but I feel that all religious orders should be treated like terrorist organizations. Just look at the trail of misery left in their wake for centuries. They are nothing like the God they claim to adore.
@Kárl: Priests and Sisters for Life protest abortion, get arrested, rescue mothers and babies from abortion mills, confront pro abortion politicians all the time.
Do you ? Or like the pro aborts Halligan, Zappone, Smith and others do you just hand wring safely on Tuam, while condoning TODAY’s aborted babies being dumped in trash, or sold ?
Check out abortionist Kermit Gosnell, or the young Irish women who died after her abortion in the London taxi, leaving the MARIE STOPES abortion clinic ?
Bacik, Halligan, Brid Smith very silent them, as was our pro abortion media.
Good
Madness that this has to be raised. WTF like?
Is Kenny a lier ? How many years has he been a TD ? His father before him was a TD for the Mayo constituncy from where the poor misfortune women would have been placed in that home.
‘Literally’ a handful of nuns…
Just and right wasr with all this anti catholic propaganda! Let be anin ya then ! Ye talk and write a good one ,eh?
@Mick Rick Jones: dear rick, with respect, I don’t think your posts here are appropriate. Abortion in Ireland is illegal under most circumstances. The people posting here are asking for the same justice system to apply the rule of law when investigating the horrific findings in tuam. Your views are important but perhaps you should review your posts with some of you piers and ask for advice on the best place to highlight your grievances. I don’t think the victims in this situation and those pushing for the judiciary to intervene would feel that you fully empathise with their feelings. This is a horrific find and requires us to focus on healing and understanding. The fight to maintain abortion laws is perhaos best brought up in another forum.
Guess what ?
pro abortion John Halligan/Brid Smith/Coppinger all support abortion on demand and want that here. In the abortion commercial business, for example, UK or US commercial abortion mills practices with dead babies are..
… aborted babies bodies are NOW, TODAY 1)incinerated to heat abortion hospitals,
2) dumped bloodily in “medical waste” trash cans,
3) dismembered alive limb from limb,
4) their kidneys, lungs sold for profit, by Planned Parenthood, which of course is affiliated to the leading anti 8th pro abortion lobby, the IFPA. PP funds and wants pro abortion front groups here. Join the dots, folks.
Pro abort Halligan/Coppinger and co. jump on the Tuam bandwagon, grandstand, and waffle about “respect” for babies in Tuam etc, while simultaneously, advocating removal of the 8th to facilitate abortion of babies here.
What sanctimonious hypocrites Halligan, Smith and the other Tuam band wagon jumpers are, exploiting the Tuam tragedy, condoning abortion babies, while crying crocodile tears for Tuams sad mothers and babies.
Mr halligans home is a stones throw from the ” good Shepherd home convent” in waterford, ” turn a blind eye ” what’s he saying about that place ,
have your say