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Our capacity for self-delusion has had awful results for those who were locked up, but has also contributed to our economic ruin, writes FINTAN O’TOOLE

THE FIRST time I wrote about the issue of the women who were incarcerated in Magdalene homes was in September 1993. The grounds of the largest such home in the UK or Ireland, High Park in Drumcondra, Dublin, had been sold off to a property developer by the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity. The graveyard was included in the deal – the bodies of the Magdalenes were dug up and re-interred in Glasnevin Cemetery. I noticed that at the same time, the sisters had lost a lot of money speculating on the shares of what was Ireland’s first great bubble company, Guinness Peat Aviation.