Archbishop Diarmuid Martin and Cancellation of Seminar on Tuam Children’s Home

The Site of a Graveyard for Children who Died in the Tuam Mother and Babies Home, Co Galway, Ireland

Proposed History Seminar on Tuam Mother and Baby Home

On Sunday 30 August I was due to speak at a History Seminar arranged in the leadup to the presentation to Government of the final Report on Mother and Baby Homes - scheduled for 30 October 2020. The seminar was due to be held  in the University Church on St Stephen's Green, Dublin. The particular focus of our talks is the  Home operated by the Bon Secours Sisters in Tuam, Co Galway from 1924 to 1961. The Tuam home is only one of 18 such being examined by the Commission of Investigation chaired by Judge Yvonne Murphy BUT it was the world-wide publication of atrocity stories about the Bon Secours Sisters in 2014 that sparked the creation of the Commission. I have referred to these stories in the course of my three previous articles on The Tuam Babies and the Bon Secours Nuns  {link is to number [3]}  One illustration will suffice here (from an article by Brendan O'Neill)

A hysterical piece in the Irish Independent compared the Tuam home to the Nazi Holocaust, Rwanda and Srebrenica, saying that in all these settings people were killed ‘because they were scum’

My own topic was to be “False allegations of child abuse against the Catholic Church, including homicide". This talk would be based on my June 2018 blog article Blood Libel in Ireland - directed against Catholics not Jews! but updated in line with the atrocity stories relating to Tuam. I had thought that Ireland's Blood Libel scandal had ended in 2010 when a Garda inquiry told the then Minister for Justice that there was no evidence to link the Catholic Church to the murder of the child Bernadette Connolly in 1970. However it seems that I was premature!

Cancellation of Seminar - by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin?

At about 2.30 pm on Thursday 27th August, the person in charge of the booking arrangements for the University Church rang our own organiser Brian Nugent to inform him  that the Church had cancelled the booking. This person did not say why or who exactly instructed him to do that. Brian told us that he was amazed that while we, as the speakers and organisers, were not told anything very much about why the venue cancelled it was nonetheless prominently reported in the Irish Times on the same day (see below). Brian told us that it is clear from the Irish Times report that the Archdiocese cancelled it, maybe under pressure from the government, or maybe because the subject matter was disagreeable to them?

Brian went on to tell us that - as regards whether or not we are within government health guidelines - he had twice, cleared the event with the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), via their helpline, which is the main Government information source on the Covid regulations. He tried but couldn't get that advice in writing. However he noticed that the Irish Times itself, on the front page of its edition the previous Saturday (22 August) stated in reference to the current in force guidelines

Since late June, indoor gatherings have been restricted to 50 people under the Government public health controls. Further restrictions announced this week identified only weddings and artistic and cultural events as being allowed to have groups of up to 50.

Our Seminar arrangements are clearly within that 50 limit, and that's what the HSE confirmed to Brian.

So why on earth would Archbishop Diarmuid Martin insist on the cancellation of an event that was approved by the HSE and was defending the Catholic Church against false allegations of child abuse - up to and including Homicide?  I have a detailed article on the Archbishop on my old website (not Blog) www.IrishSalem.com  that may explain a lot! (He is the Irish Catholic equivalent of Hewlett Johnson the late unlamented "Red Dean" of Canterbury - but at least the latter never made it to Archbishop!)

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin

Article in Irish Times by Patsy McGarry

Seminar in Dublin Church on Tuam Children’s Home Cancelled due to Covid-19
Topics included ‘False allegations of child abuse against the Catholic Church, including homicide’

Irish Times 27 August 2020, by Patsy McGarry

A “history seminar” challenging findings of various Commissions of Inquiry into child abuse and planned for Dublin’s University Church on Stephen’s Green next Sunday has been cancelled.

Advertised as a history seminar “with particular reference to the Tuam Children’s Home” likely attendees had been advised to “arrive early as numbers are restricted due to Government Covid-19 restrictions.”

A spokeswoman for Dublin’s Catholic archdiocese said staff at the University Church had “confirmed that the event due to take place this Sunday has been cancelled. Current Government guidance permitting people to gather at places of worship is for religious services only. No other gatherings are permitted.”

The theme of the seminar was: “Do modern Irish historians exaggerate the role of the Catholic Church in independent Ireland” and speakers scheduled to take part included Brian Nugent, author of the book @Tuambabies: A critical look at the Tuam Children’s Home Scandal.

It challenges findings of local historian Catherine Corless concerning the Tuam Mother and Baby Home and those made there by the Mother and Baby Home Commission, published in its March 2017 interim report.

It found that “significant quantities of human remains” had been discovered there, in what appeared to be a sewage tank. The remains involved “a number of individuals with age-at-death ranges from approximately 35 foetal weeks to two to three years,” it said.

Mr Nugent was to speak on “Did home rule equal Rome rule in independent Ireland?”

Another scheduled speaker was Eugene Jordan, author of False History Underpinning the Irish Mother and Baby Home Scandals. He was to give a talk on “The Tuam Children’s Home story, a failure of modern Irish historiography.”

The third scheduled speaker was Rory Connor, described as an “expert on various Commissions and Inquiries” as well as author of the irishsalem blogspot.com website. He was to speak on “False allegations of child abuse against the Catholic Church, including homicide”.

Rescheduled Seminar

We managed to hold the Seminar in Galway on 4 October 2020 with the help of www.CatholicArena . Links to videos of the talks are here "Seminar on Tuam Children's Home (Online) - Transferred to Galway"

Blood Libel in Ireland - directed against Catholics not Jews!

Patsy McGarry R.E. Correspondent for Irish Times - the Man who Started it All!

[ It was Patsy McGarry's article in the Irish Times on 25 September 1999 (see below) that started me on my current Crusade! ]

LETTER TO SUNDAY TRIBUNE RE CHILD KILLING ALLEGATIONS

[ NOTES:
(i) In 2006 the Sunday Tribune offered to publish a letter on this subject if I reduced it to an acceptable length. However this version is already a summary of a much longer submission I made to the Irish Human Rights Commission in 2004, requesting them to investigate the allegations of child murder etc made by the media against the Christian Brothers. I felt I could not summarise it any further so the project lapsed.

(ii) At the time of writing,  I forgot that in 1997 a child murder allegation had also been directed against the Sisters of Mercy. See article in The Mirror on 11 October 1997 (by Neil Leslie, editor of the Irish edition) entitled

Hot Poker Was Used On Little Marion... No Cash Will Get Her Back; I Think My Baby Was Murdered At The Orphanage, Says Payout Mum ]

Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 19:29:19 +0100 (BST)
From: Rory Connor
Subject: False Allegations of Child Abuse
To: Editor Sunday Tribune

Letters to Editor 
Sunday Tribune

Dear Sir, 
I refer to the controversy concerning false allegations of child abuse. Some leaders of "victims" groups seem to find it very difficult to accept the idea that such allegations exist. A spokesperson for "One in Four" claimed that out of thousands of claims to the Redress Board, only one was found to be false.

For some years now I have been looking into accusations of child killing which have been made against the Christian Brothers and other religious. I choose this topic because it is something that can be investigated long after the supposed events. In most cases no boy died at the time in question so it is not even a case of "honest" hysteria but blatant lying. (I call these "Murder of the Undead" allegations!) [NOTE: I later coined the additional phrase "Victimless Murders"]

If someone accuses you of child abuse 30, 40 or even 50 years ago there is no way you can clear your name. However if the same person claims you killed a child and no child died at the time, then this says a great deal about your accuser's credibility.

The following is an extract from a letter I wrote to the Irish Human Rights Commission in March 2004 regarding this issue. I list some of the more prominent "Murder of the Undead" allegations.

1. Patsy McGarry's article in the Irish Times on 25 September 1999 quoting Patrick Walsh of SOCA who claimed to have attended the funerals of boys killed by the Brothers. No boy died while Patrick Walsh was in Artane so his claim is not even "honest" hysteria. Mick Waters of SOCA UK wrote to the Irish Times on 17 October 1999 to express his support for Patsy McGarry. This gentleman still retains his position in SOCA UK, as indeed does Patrick Walsh in SOCA. (I have seen the latter quoted as a spokesman for SOCA on several occasions). [NOTE: SOCA = "Survivors of Child Abuse"]

2. Louis Lentin's programme "Our Boys" on TV3 in October 1999 that was repeated in November 2000, quoting Gerry Kelly (then head of the "Alliance for the Healing of Institutional Abuse") who also claimed to have attended funerals of murdered boys. Again no boy died while Gerry Kelly was at Artane.

Gerry Kelly also slandered Nora Wall (see articles in Ireland on Sunday dated 25 July and 1st August 1999). Moreover, a few weeks before they first broadcast Our Boys, TV3 were forced to apologise to the Bishop of Cloyne for libelling him. (This apology was buried by the media - I found out about it myself when I rang the Bishop's office to ask how his legal case was going!).

3. John Kelly of SOCA who told me on the steps of the Pro Cathedral and in front of several journalists, that there were mass graves in Artane and other  institutions (quoted in the Irish Independent on 25 November 2002)

4. Brighid McLaughlin quoting Mannix Flynn in the Sunday Independent on 22 December 2002, that there had been a "holocaust" at Letterfrack with boys buried all over the place and also that the Gardai at Clifden had uncovered a "massive paedophile ring" which ran "from the low minions right up to the top". In January 2003, a few weeks after he made those allegations, Mr. Flynn was elected a member of Aosdana, the association of creative artists and he has recently been made Director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art Is this in spite of, or because of, his vicious lies?

5. Mary Raftery who claimed in the TV programme "States of Fear" and in her book "Suffer the Little Children" that there were "deaths in mysterious and unexplained circumstances" in Artane. She failed to mention that the one case which she quoted had been the subject of a coroner's report and when her "witness" gave three separate and contradictory accounts, she tried to resolve the contradictions by claiming - on Today With Pat Kenny 22/11/99 - that there was more than one such death (i.e. due to a fall from a staircase). See letter from Brother M. Reynolds in the Irish Times on 22 December 1999.

In a letter to the Irish Times on 13 January 2000 Mary Raftery claimed that the death of the boy was the subject of an ongoing Garda investigation. When the Garda Press Office confirmed that this was not the case, Mary Raftery's response (on Eamon Dunphy's The Last Word) was "This is complete rubbish. This is rubbish. This is rubbish" (see Letters page on 26 January 2000). It is clear that she wants the Christian Brothers to have murdered a boy in order to justify her own hatred!

6. Mary Raftery also made thuggish allegations against Sister Stanislaus Kennedy, accusing her of failing to act when a social worker told her a boy was being sexually abused. (She also accused Sister Stanislaus of berating civil servants at a meeting because they failed to give sufficient credit to the Church for its social work). Sister Stan was subjected to sustained and vicious attack in the media until the social worker wrote to the Irish Times to confirm that, at the time he spoke to her, he himself had no idea that sex abuse was involved and that he felt that Sister Stan had done everything possible for the children. Edward Murphy's letter is in the Irish Times Letters Page on 22 December 1999. It did not make the news pages. Of course Mary Raftery made no attempt to apologise. (Nor did she apologise when the three civil servants involved in the meeting told Breda O'Brien that no such episode had taken place).

7. Mary Raftery also claimed that a boy who said he had been sexually abused by Brother Joseph O’Connor, waited around the Mater Hospital when Brother O’Connor was dying and then went in to take a look at the body to make sure he was dead. Brother Joseph O'Connor did not die in the Mater Hospital. Again there was no apology from Ms. Raftery. (Brother Joseph O'Connor was the Brother responsible for the Artane Boys Band. Sister Stanislaus helped to set up the first childcare course for lay people in Ireland. I assume this is why Mary Raftery attacked them.)

8. Liam Reid’s article in the Irish Times on 27 November 2003, which deliberately repeats the blood libel about the death of William Delaney in 1970. Following a disgusting media campaign in 2001 the Evening Herald was forced to admit that the post mortem on the exhumed body of William Delaney had found that he died of natural causes (Evening Herald, 27 April 2001). However, having howled obscenities at the Christian Brothers, the media dropped the issue like a shot. Liam Reid is depending on people having short memories.

In December 2003 the Royal College of Surgeons published a study on clerical sexual abuse. This pointed out that the Irish Times used the term "paedophile priest" 322 times between August 1993 and August 2000. Apart from the term "paedophile farmer" which was used 5 times, no other occupation was linked to paedophilia in reports. (I understand that the references to "paedophile farmer" occurred when a social worker wrote to the Irish Times to enquire why it never used such terms and a farmer then wrote in to protest!). The Irish Times is anti-clerical in the same way other publications are anti-Semitic or racist.
[Statistics are from an article by Michael Breen in the Winter 2000 issue of the Jesuit journal 'Studies'. ]

9. Bruce Arnold’s article about Letterfrack in the Irish Independent on 18 June 2003 which claimed that "boys are buried in the woods as well". Garda Superintendent Tony O’Dowd told the Irish Catholic (9 and 16 January 2003) "there was no evidence available that would suggest that foul play led to the deaths of anyone buried inside or outside of the cemetery at the old industrial school of Letterfrack". Mr. Arnold should be asked to produce his evidence.

10. Finally though it did not involve a murder allegation I would request the Commission to question Paul Williams of the Sunday World about his repulsive allegations against Nora Wall on 11 July 1999 i.e. that she had procured children for Fr. Brendan Smyth. Former residents and a "counselor" - all un-named- are quoted in support of the allegations. Who are these people and whom else have they made allegations against?

Nora Wall won damages against the Sunday World. However the story of her "victory" was buried by the media. I myself saw it by accident, in a short article in Phoenix on 8 November 2002, which failed to mention the nature of the libel or the name of the journalist responsible. Paul Williams is now Crime Editor for the Sunday World. I think he was Crime Correspondent in July 1999, which suggests that he has been promoted since the libel!

Reaction of the Irish Human Rights Commission 
They said these allegations were a matter for the Director of Public Prosecutions. I already told them he had refused to prosecute two sets of "Murder of the Undead" allegations - by Patrick Walsh and Gerry Kelly - under the Incitement to Hatred Act. (See nos 1 and 2 above).  However he prosecuted a bus driver for telling a black passenger to "go back where you came from" and the driver was convicted of incitement!

They also said that this issue was not in their 3 year Plan. However one of the Commissioners is taking a case to the Supreme Court to have her lesbian marriage recognised in this country.  She is being supported by the IHRC so presumably THAT is in their Plan!

THE REASON WHY 
And my own motivation? I once had a teacher, a De La Salle Brother called Maurice Kirk who became one of the main influences on my life. He died in a car crash on 10 April 1974 but I remember him still. A bit like "Tom Brown's Schooldays" really!

Rory Connor

Subsequent Episode of Blood Libel - Alan Shatter T.D. in 2009

When I wrote to the Sunday Tribune in 2006, I thought that the claims of child murder directed against Catholic Religious were more or less finished. Our anti-clerics had come to recognise that it was counter-productive to make allegations that could be disproved - and murder claims definitely fall into that category! However the publication of the Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (Ryan Report) in May 2009 encouraged our more fanatical anti-clerics to try again. I have written about former Minster for Justice and Equality Alan Shatter in a previous article. In 2009 he was a Fine Gael backbencher and I think, their spokesman for Justice and Equality (!). 

In my article "The Maurice McCabe Affair - Six Top Level Resignations To Date (and More to Come?)",  I wrote concerning Shatter:
Alan Shatter: In 2009 Shatter demanded - and got - a high level Garda investigation into allegations that the Catholic Church had been involved in the unsolved murder of  a 10 year old girl Bernadette Connolly, four decades previously in 1970. A year later he was told by the then Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern (Fianna Fail) that no evidence of such collusion had been found. A few months after that, Fianna Fail were out of power and in March 2011, Shatter himself became Minister for Justice in the new Fine Gael government. There was not a word from him subsequently about Bernadette Connolly, so we can assume that he did not suspect that Fianna Fail had colluded with the Gardai investigators to protect the Church! However Shatter further aggravated an existing climate of public hysteria - and fell victim to it himself three years later.
I think that may well be the final time in this country that a "respectable" politician, journalist or leader of a "Victims'" organisation demands an official inquiry into claims that the Catholic Church murdered children! It is ironic that it was a Jewish member of Dail Eireann who made that demand.

The Maurice McCabe Affair - Six Top Level Resignations To Date (and More to Come?)

Alan Shatter - Resigned May 2014

Frances Fitzgerald - Resigned Nov. 2017

To date the saga of whistleblower Sergeant Maurice McCabe has resulted in the forced resignations of  six prominent individuals and has had a negative effect on the careers of  two successive Irish Prime Ministers - and on the current Minster for Justice Charlie Flanagan (whose two predecessors, pictured above, had to fall on their swords in disgrace). Meanwhile Sergeant McCabe has gone from success to success - "he who must not be criticised" - even though the O'Higgins Commission was less than supportive of his claim that five senior Gardai, ranging from his immediate superior to the Garda Commissioner, were corrupt.
   .
"It's a bit Irish" our former colonial masters used to say about some especially farcical situation. However they are in no position to laugh now. In recent years in the UK, two major investigations  - Operations Midland (London Metropolitan Police) and Conifer (Wiltshire Police) - were carried out into allegations of paedophilia, homicide and Satanic Ritual Abuse leveled at former Tory Prime Minister Ted Heath who died in 2005 i.e. a decade before the investigations began. In Ireland we still have some way to go  before we plumb those depths of insanity - but we are getting there!

To summarise the Irish saga, the casualties to date include: 

• Two successive Ministers for Justice - Alan Shatter and Frances Fitzgerald.
• Two successive Secretary-Generals of the Department of Justice - Brian Purcell and Noel Waters.
• Two successive Garda (Police) Commissioners - Martin Callinan and Noirin O'Sullivan.

Moreover the affair contributed to the controversies surrounding the retirement of  former Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny in June 2017, while his successor Leo Varadkar has been weakened by the resignation of deputy PM Frances Fitzgerald.

[ I have photos only of Shatter and Fitzgerald above. Both may well be  innocent in the present case, but they previously whipped up the media mob against their own "reactionary" enemies. (See links on their names). Now they have fallen victim not to the "reactionaries", but to their former media friends who have turned Nihilist, and now hate everyone in power! ]

The most dangerous and long-lasting consequence of this fake scandal is likely to be on the morale of An Garda Siochana (Irish police). However the immediate consequence will be the difficulty in getting a credible candidate to take on the post of Secretary- General of the Department of Justice. Noel Waters reluctantly took over from Brian Purcell in 2014 as Acting Secretary General on the understanding that he would pass on the poisoned chalice to a newly appointed SG after a few weeks. However no credible candidate applied for the job and Noel Waters was appointed on a permanent basis in October 2016. Now he has gone too!

Enough of shameful tokenism, dismantling 'Independent Republic' must be next step

The above is the headline over an article in the Irish Independent on 29 November 2017 by Ivan Yates, a businessman and broadcaster who is also a former Fine Gael politician who was once a Minister (of Agriculture). The 'Independent Republic' he refers to is the Department of Justice and his article demonstrates the danger to the institutions of the State posed by people who treat a whistleblower with uncritical adulation. ("Shameful tokenism" is supposed to describe the multiple resignations and general hysteria to date.) Yates also provides a useful summary of how this scandal developed:

The entire tenure of Frances Fitzgerald as justice minister covered May 8, 2014 to June 14, 2017.To ascertain the first she knew of Garda management's campaign of retaliation against Sergeant Maurice McCabe was in June 2016, could never be sustained. .....Appointing and constantly defending Noirin O'Sullivan as Garda commissioner and Noel Waters as secretary general at Justice meant she favoured and protected the status quo rather than seeking radical reform. 

The first wave of the toxic fallout for the failed McCabe character assasination ended the careers of former justice minister Alan Shatter, Garda commissioner Martin Callinan and secretary general of the Department of Justice Brian Purcell. The second wave toppled Taoisceach Enda Kenny, Ms O Sullivan, Mr. Waters and Ms. Fitzgerald. But more need to go. Management structures at An Garda Siochana in the Phoenix Park and Department of Justice in St. Stephens Green need to be deconstructed. ........

The 'Independent Republic' of the Department of Justice needs to be dismantled. It hasn't so much regulated the Department of Justice as acted as its downtown office. It has used the cloak of 'state security' to operate a secretive culture unanswerable to the elected government. It is dysfunctionable in passing communications to ministers in time, proving this week that it always covers its own backside. 

Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan risks becoming its latest victim by failing to assert his ministerial authority.......

It's a nihilistic view and unsurprisingly Ivan Yates praises the media and TDs Mick Wallace and Clare Daly for voicing  the same criticisms over the years. I see that Yates gave an interview to Eolas magazine recently in which he gave this interesting overview of his career to date:
http://www.eolasmagazine.ie/live-and-let-live-ivan-yates/
“It’s funny,” laughs Yates. “When I went into politics a lot of Protestants said: ‘Tut Tut, politics is the lowest form of animal life and you shouldn’t be doing it.’ And when I was getting out of politics into bookmaking the politicians said: ‘What are you doing? Bookmaking is the lowest form of animal life!’ So I kept going down-hill and ending up in the media is the gutter altogether.”

Well that's honest anyway - and accurate as well!

Garda Controversies:The Personnel and Casualties to Date

 Maurice McCabe: Actually more an instigator than a casualty. Whistleblower Sergeant Maurice McCabe began raising his questions about alleged garda malpractise more than a decade ago. The ongoing Disclosures Tribunal chaired by Mr. Justice Peter Charleton is investigating if he was subjected to a "smear campaign" by the gardai he was accusing of corruption. (Does this "campaign" amount to anything more than gardai defending themselves against allegations that the O'Higgins Commission found were false?)

Martin Callinan: The former Garda commissioner resigned in March 2014 with the force embroiled in two controversies - namely the whistleblower issue and concern over the practise of recording phone calls at Garda stations. (Giving evidence before the Public Accounts Committee in January 2014, Martin Callinan had described the actions of  two Garda whistleblowers John Wilson and Maurice McCabe as "disgusting".)

Alan Shatter: The ex-Fine Gael TD quit as Justice Minister in May 2014 after his handling of the whistleblower claims was challanged in the Guerin report. The O'Higgins Commission subsequently found that Mr Shatter had handled the concerns appropriately. The Report of the Commission was published in May 2016 - but Shatter had also lost his Dail seat in the General Election of February 2016.

Brian Purcell: Former Department of Justice Secretary General Brian Purcell stood aside in July 2014 after then Justice minister Frances Fitzgerald published theToland Report on the Department, which identified a "closed, secretive and silo-driven culture" there. 

Enda Kenny: Mr Kenny's departure as Taoiseach (Prime Minister) in June 2017 is said to have been  accelerated over his handling of revelations the previous February, that false allegations of child abuse were made against Sergeant Maurice McCabe. (A gross blunder by a social worker had led her to cut and paste details from a diferent case, onto a file dealing with Sergeant McCabe!) 

Noirin O'Sullivan: Ms. O'Sullivan quit as Garda commissioner in September 2017. She said that the "unending cycle" of investigations and inquiries into Garda controversies was making it difficult to "implement the  deep ... reform necessary to modernise" the Garda. She was the second garda commissioner to resign over the Maurice McCabe affair.

Noel Waters: Mr.Waters served as acting secretary general of Department of Justice after Mr. Purcell's departure. He was appointed on a permanent basis in October 2016. He had planned to retire in February 2018 but instead resigned on 28 November 2017 while issuing a statement that those working in Justice had been "subjected to a barrage of unwarranted criticism". He was the second Secretary general of Justice to resign over the McCabe affair.

Frances Fitzgerald: Frances Fitzgerald resigned as Tanaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) and Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation on 28 November 2017. She had been Minister for Justice until June 2017 and thus became the second former Minister for Justice to resign over the whistleblower "scandal". 

Fitzgerald was a close ally of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar but Fianna Fail had threatened to withdraw from their co-operation agreement with the Government and thus cause an election, if Fitzgerald did not resign. Varadkar is therefore the second Taoiseach to be adversely  affected by this "scandal" based on the allegations of Sergeant McCabe.

Charlie Flanagan: Charlie Flanagan is our current Minister for Justice. As indicated in previous posts and especially this one, he survives because he is prepared to throw his own civil servants under the bus in order to save himself. To do him justice (no pun intended), the almost simultaneous resignations of  Noel Waters and Frances Fitzgerald also took pressure off him and served to sate the media witch-hunters. For the time being, no one wants to force a third Minister for Justice to fall on his sword!

Conclusion:

It is notable that all of the politicians who have been adversely affected by this fake "scandal" have themselves  slandered other people or joined in media witch-hunts against their ideological opponents. 

Alan Shatter: In 2009 Shatter demanded - and got - a high level Garda investigation into allegations that the Catholic Church had been involved in the unsolved murder of  a 10 year old girl Bernadette Connolly, four decades previously in 1970. A year later he was told by the then Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern (Fianna Fail) that no evidence of such collusion had been found. A few months after that, Fianna Fail were out of power and in March 2011, Shatter himself became Minister for Justice in the new Fine Gael government. There was not a word from him subsequently about Bernadette Connolly, so we can assume that he did not suspect that Fianna Fail had colluded with the Gardai investigators to protect the Church! However Shatter further aggravated an existing climate of public hysteria - and fell victim to it himself three years later.  

Enda Kenny. On 20 July 2011 the then Taoiseach Enda Kenny condemned the Vatican for its allege role in a "scandal" relating to the Dioces of Cloyne in Co. Cork.  He stated that the Church's alleged role in obstructing the Cloyne investigation into child abuse was a serious infringement upon the sovereignty of Ireland and that the scandal revealed "the dysfunction, disconnection and elitism that dominates the culture of the Vatican to this day" He added that "the historic relationship between church and state in Ireland could not be the same again".

On 3 September 2011, the Holy See issued its response to Mr Kenny's speech noting that "the accusation that the Holy See attempted to frustrate an Inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic as little as three years ago, not three decades ago", which Mr Kenny made no attempt to substantiate, is unfounded. Indeed, when asked, a Government spokesperson clarified that Mr. Kenny was not referring to any specific incident. [My emphasis].  The response added that "Those Reports [...] contain no evidence to suggest that the Holy See meddled in the internal affairs of the Irish State or, for that matter, was involved in the day-to-day management of Irish dioceses or religious congregations with respect to sexual abuse issues."

[NOTE: The reckless invocation of a non-existent grievance is a feature of  anti-clericalism in Ireland and I have written about an extreme example here. Our anti-clerics know that they will not be required to justify their allegations, so they feel free to make absurd claims!]

Leo Varadkar and Frances Fitzgerald supported the witch-hunt against journalist Kevin Myers in July/August 2017. Leo Varadkar claimed that the article written by Myers  "is misogynistic and anti-Semitic" and approved of the Sunday Times action in firing him. Frances Fitzgerald added that "there’s an onus on everyone, including the media obviously, to make sure that articles like that do not appear". Few journalists objected to our Prime Minister and Deputy PM endorsing political censorship nor did they pose any awkward questions to our great leaders when the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland declared that Kevin Myers is not an anti-Semite. However Varadkar and Fitzgerald's endorsement of the witch-hunt against Myers did not do them any good later when they themselves were targeted by the same media wolves!

Our current Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan was just an ordinary TD (Member of Parliament) in July 2009 when he made an obscene allegation against Nora Wall (formally Sister Dominic of the Sisters of Mercy). The allegation - that she had supplied children to paedophile priests - was one for which she had received an apology and damages from the Sunday World in 2002. Deputy Flanagan of course knew that he could not be sued for anything he said in the Dail (Parliament). I quote from his speech:
"There is more to this than meets the eye in respect of these social events. It has been suggested that there were frequent visits to the Cappoquin home by some clergy from Mount Melleray Abbey. Access to children may have been a key motivation for these visits. One must bear in mind that Mount Melleray was selected by the notorious paedophile, Fr. Brendan Smith, as a holiday destination or as a haven to which to escape when he was on the run from the authorities in Northern Ireland. This issue must be revisited" [My emphasis]

"This issue must be revisited". Like Alan Shatter before him, Charlie Flanagan is now Justice Minister. Has he revisited the issue? If he has failed to do so - as Shatter failed to follow up on his allegations regarding the murder of Bernadette Connolly - why has this happened? Does the Catholic Church still exercise secret power in Department of Justice?   Are senior civil servants members of Opus Dei or the Knights of Columbanus?  I think that Minister Flanagan has a duty to enlighten us!

NOTE dated 11 January 2018
In addition to slandering Nora Wall (and the Cistercian monks of Mount Melleray) in 2009, I had forgotten that  Charlie Flanagan also defamed a senior civil servant in the  Department of Health. This man had carried out an inspection of the Sister of Mercy children's home in Cappoquin which was managed by Nora Wall and given it a favourable report. In the insane  imaginings of the then Fine Gael Spokesman for Justice (now Minister), that meant the official must have been complicit in child abuse and a member of a Paedophile Ring! See my Comment below dated 10 January.

Charlie Flanagan is now trying to save his political skin by throwing his own civil servants under the bus in relation to the Maurice McCabe "scandal". Clearly this is NOT the first time he targeted civil servants in relation to an invented and hysterical "scandal".