The nub of the issue, in terms of the outrage currently being experienced within the survivor community, is the treatment by this Government and successive Governments of victims of State wrongdoing. The Government needs to display compassion, humility and understanding, but that is not coming through and has not come through in the context of the survivors of industrial schools, Magdalene laundries and symphysiotomy. The list goes on. Instead, what we see is a litigious, legally minded and legally focused response to victims of State wrongdoing and ultimately an attitude of waiting for people to die out and for the problem to simply die. In my role in a previous organisation, I advised the interdepartmental working group on the redress programme for the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes. One of my main messages within that forum was that there was too much dominance of legal thinking and too little humility and compassion. In that exercise I listened to survivors of mother and baby homes. I was struck by how many of them have shaped their lives around their experiences. These people have got qualifications in human rights so they can argue their case. They have fought for decades for justice and to be seen and heard, and many of them will die before they ever see it. This current development is just another demonstration and display of this Government's failure to grasp that concept. When we as a State have so brutally failed a group of people, the Government and all of us must show utter humility and absolute compassion when we engage with people and deal with all of these issues. Building and concreting over the site of a mother and baby home is so far from that that it really is horrific.

Sentiment score: -0.24