“We must start by apologising.” And so Bertie Ahern did.
When he rose to his feet in the Dáil chamber in 1999 to offer the first State apology to abuse victims, Ahern may not have intended to start an almost 30-year trend of taoisigh performing similar acts of atonement to those who have been failed by the State in the most cruel and catastrophic ways.
Since Ahern’s landmark apology to those who had suffered child abuse in residential institutions run by religious congregations, every single taoiseach who has come after him has made at least one similar apology – the majority of which have been offered to survivors of religious-run institutions.
Leo Varadkar apologised to the women who were failed by the CervicalCheck controversy and men who were criminalised for their homosexuality, while Simon Harris apologised to the victims and survivors of the Stardust tragedy.
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Every other apology related to religious abuse: Brian Cowen’s 2009 apology on the publication of the Ryan Report, Enda Kenny’s 2013 apology to the survivors of Magdalene laundries and Micheál Martin’s 2021 apology to former residents of mother and baby institutions and county homes.
Martin, once again the latest Government leader to have to articulate such regrets in his speech to survivors of institutional abuse on Wednesday, was this week building on that first 1999 apology that he himself had helped to craft 26 years ago.
Ahern had been keenly aware of the harrowing stories of institutional abuse survivors including Christine Buckley, having heard the testimony first hand from survivors in his own constituency in Dublin.
Buckley, who became one of the first survivors to go public with her story in the mid-nineties, had been frustrated that the national outcry that followed the Dear Daughter documentary about her story had not moved the government to act. (Ahern’s apology would happen to coincide with the broadcast of the landmark States of Fear documentary series on Ireland’s industrial school system.)
Buckley and other survivors sought a meeting with Martin in 1999 – given that the Department of Education had historic responsibility for those who had been assigned to the institutions. Survivors like Buckley had been accused by some of suffering from false memories of their abuse.
Martin himself would go on to tell the 2004 Ryan commission into child abuse, which followed on from Ahern’s apology, that the meeting with Buckley in 1999 had left a “deep impression” on him and had been the “catalyst” for the State apology that followed.
The survivors had looked Martin in the eye at the meeting and asked him to “tell us you believe us”. Afterwards, Martin told Ahern that to not issue an apology “would have been a devastating blow to survivors”.
Last November, decades on from that first encounter with Buckley, Martin was once again having a fateful meeting with survivors of institutional abuse.
Miriam Moriarty Owens, Mary Donovan, Mary Dunlevy Greene and Maurice Patton O’Connell had been on hunger strike outside Leinster House for 51 days, in protest at what they described as a lack of State support in existing services for survivors of industrial and reformatory schools.
In that meeting, survivors were promised financial assistance, social housing and healthcare support – as well as a commitment to offer this week’s State apology.
When he issued an apology in January 2021 for the “profound generational wrong” visited upon Irish mothers and their children who were in either mother and baby or county homes, the Taoiseach said an apology on its own is not enough” and that “actions speak louder than words.”
Since the historic first of Ahern’s apology, what was a stunning rarity of a political moment in 1999 has become a successive feature of modern Irish politics. But many of the most profound State apologies have often been followed by actions which have failed to match the strength of sorry words.
Enda Kenny’s profound and emotional state apology to Magdalene survivors in 2013 was followed by a support scheme that was lambasted by survivors and human rights groups for being narrow and exclusionary.
Ahern’s own apology was followed by a highly controversial deal between the Government and the religious orders which allowed them to pay €128 million in return for an indemnity against all future actions against them.
Martin’s apologies to survivors of industrial and reformatory schools is separate to but comes before a practical test for the Government of its ability to match words with actions for survivors of abuse.
Last year, the Government set up the McGrath Commission into how historical child sexual abuse allegations were handled in schools. The commission was set up after a scoping inquiry had detailed 2,395 allegations of sexual abuse at 308 schools run by religious congregations, involving 884 alleged abusers. The scoping inquiry had called for both a commission of investigation and a redress scheme.
There have already been dire warnings within Government about the cost of what will likely be the biggest redress scheme in the history of the State – with estimates that up to 40,000 survivors could be entitled to compensation under the scheme.
The prose for apologies may come easier with each passing decade, but the practicalities of following them up with action may get harder.
