What a horrible, horrible start to International Women’s Day.
It tends to be a bit of a joke down Kildare Street way, with people falling over each other to recognise the day that's it, but little else.
"Happy International Women's Day" the lads along the corridor always say, smirking. "So when will we have one for the men?" (Sunday, November 19th, as it happens.)
This year was different. There was little to celebrate and too much to mourn. Passions ran high in the chamber; difficult, emotive issues were under the spotlight.
The Dáil first discussed the shocking story of “Grace”, a vulnerable woman allegedly subjected to long-term abuse in a foster home. The warning signs were there and noted, yet she was ignored.
Then it moved on to the discovery of the remains of dead babies and toddlers in the sewage system beneath a mother and baby home which was closed in the 1960s.
Meanwhile, on the streets outside, women gathered for the first of two protests over the lack of abortion rights in Ireland. But overshadowing it all was the terrible news of the Clondalkin fire deaths.
Defensive mode
The fire happened in a shelter for victims of domestic abuse. Over all the years of revelations of the abuse of women and children in mainly religious-run but State-supported institutions, people can become inured to the pain and desperation of so many those stories from our past.
In the harrowing context of Grace's foster home ordeal and the Tuam babies scandal, news of the fatal fire was devastating.
So the Dáil discussed commissions and widening them and the Taoiseach called for reflection and counselled that this time, when the State investigates what happened and why, the job must be done properly.
"Today is International Women's Day and as I have said on many occasions, if Ireland was declared by WB Yeats to be 'no country for old men', then the legacy and more recent issues you've just mentioned suggest that it was positively dangerous when it came to girls and women," he told Sinn Féin's Mary Lou McDonald.
The Taoiseach was in defensive mode. His big speech from the day before, richly worded and loaded with anger at how Irish society once treated unmarried women who became pregnant , wasn’t having the effect of previous speeches he delivered in a similar vein.
“Despite all of the fine words and even the genuine sentiment that you expressed, the track record of the State and your Government is not one of moving with haste; in fact, it’s been a foot-dragging exercise and that needs to stop,” McDonald told him.
There was a sense, particularly from McDonald and Galway TD Catherine Connolly of Independents4Change, that it is time to shift from rhetoric about the past to action now.
Shocking discovery
More than once, the Taoiseach referred to the plight of Irish women forced to go abroad when they were pregnant.
"I mean, how many young girls and young women had to leave this country to go to Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham and other places?" he said to Mary Lou.
“You haven’t mentioned those and they’re the same because they came from the same places, but were sent abroad to have their children abroad.”
“What has that to do with this?” she retorted. She might have asked what about the women who are still leaving this country to go to Liverpool and the rest to have abortions.
Like the other speakers, Connolly name-checked International Women’s Day and pointed to how “on this special day we find ourselves once again discussing how the State has misused and mistreated the women of Ireland”. She also referred to Enda’s speech of the previous day.
The Tuam situation apparently came as "a shocking discovery according to everyone and particularly to yourself, Taoiseach. But this is something Galway has been aware of for a long time, highlighted by Catherine Corless back in 2014 in her painstaking and self-funded research". She stressed the words "self-funded".
The Taoiseach later paid tribute to historian Corless as the “heroine” of this whole affair. “None of this is shocking to the survivors,” said the TD.
However, what shocked her, and shocked the survivors, were his “carefully crafted words” when he told the chamber “no nuns broke into our homes to kidnap our children. We gave them up to what we convinced ourselves was the nuns’ care, and so on”.
That phrase rankled. Who had made the past shameful? “Who made it shameful to have what was natural, a pregnancy and a baby?”
The nuns may not have stolen away these women and their children in the middle of the night, but their fate was sealed as a result of “a visit from a priest or somebody else doing their job”.
While she did not doubt the Taoiseach’s bona fides, “I certainly doubt your judgment in reading that out”. She demanded to know the whereabouts of the interim report on the Tuam babies, on a Minister’s desk since last September.
Irony
Enda was stung by her words. “You can refer to carefully crafted sentences all you likes. The fact of the matter is, the nuns did not take those children out of the houses of Ireland; they were sent to these mother and baby homes in the vast majority of cases by the families themselves.”
Then he returned to the overseas theme. "The disgrace that was heaped upon parish after parish simply because a young woman became pregnant and gave birth to a child, the disgrace that they were driven out to Liverpool, Birmingham and Manchester and London and Glasgow and other places. These were people who were born and reared in our own country who were sent away, not to foster homes in this country, but to other places abroad. And their stories will be told someday too."
Catherine Connolly told him he was insulting Irish women by not fully answering her questions.
“Please, do not insult the women of Ireland on International Women’s Day and answer the question when the interim report will be published.”
The Taoiseach, doing his best, seemed hurt by the charge. It was, he told the Galway TD, beneath her. “I am as committed as anybody else to see that we deal with this for once and for all.”
And again, he remembered those women who were forced to go abroad. He couldn’t see the irony of his words. How thousands of Irish women are still forced to go abroad.
This time, to end pregnancies. “Driven out to Liverpool, Birmingham and Manchester and London and Glasgow and other places”, as the Taoiseach had it about days gone by. Yet still very much in the here and now.
