Trivialities of Sheedy distract from real crises

Yesterday morning, while standing at a traffic light in Dame Street, Dublin, a fellow pedestrian turned to me and, in what I assumed was a reference to contemporary controversies, said: "Tisn't finished."

Tisn't.

There is still more madness about. The smell of blood is up still. We are capable of concocting an even bigger crisis of the Sheedy affair than we have already done and, in doing so, we are degrading public discourse, sublimating concern from real issues, diverting from real crises.

Just take a few of the issues which might preoccupy public attention right now, rather than the trivialities of the Sheedy business.

Last night RTE television broadcast States of Fear, the second of its revelations of the physical and sexual abuse of children over decades. The first instalment showed how the Department of Education and other public bodies, as well as clerical authorities, knew full well the scale of the abuse and did nothing to intervene. This is a real issue, an issue affecting real lives. There are real issues of principle here, real issues of accountability, but how is it that these revelations have caused only a murmur of public disquiet amid the clamour over the Sheedy affair?

Later this month a book will be published which will reveal persistent and continuing abuse of another set of vulnerable people in our society. It is Walls of Silence by Annie Ryan, who so valiantly and, for such a long time so fruitlessly, has been campaigning about conditions in St Ita's Hospital, Portrane, where mentally handicapped people are accommodated.

Just take one of the revelations of Walls of Silence.

It records how under the Mental Treatment Act 1945, the Inspector of Mental Hospitals was required to inspect every mental hospital in the State at least once a year. The Act also required the inspector to present a report on the mental hospitals to the Oireachtas annually and, as an added surety that this would happen, to the President of the High Court as well. The idea presumably was that the regular publication of such reports would generate such pressure on the political system as to ensure that standards in such institutions would be maintained.

But for 13 years, up to 1979, the report of the Inspector of Mental Hospitals was not published even once and nobody bothered - not any member of the Oireachtas, not the President of the High Court, to draw attention to this.

There was a row in the Dail about this in 1979, when Charles Haughey was Minister for Health. He explained the failure to publish the reports on the grounds that the practice had fallen into disuse.

Under pressure, he agreed to have the reports of the previous three years published and this was done in the most cursory of ways. Then they didn't bother to publish an annual report for another nine years. And nobody protested, nobody in the Dail went "ballistic" about it, there were no calls for "heads", no coalition hand-wringing. During this time, there were about 14,000 Irish citizens living in conditions which were truly appalling.

An unpublished report on conditions in Clonmel hospital disclosed that many patients were being accommodated in wooden huts that had been built originally for workmen who were building the hospital in the last century. The floor boards were rotting and dirty, the roofs were leaking. There were rat holes much in evidence. There were no baths or showers. The urinals regularly overflowed.

In an article in Magill in 1980, Helen Connolly wrote about conditions in some of these hospitals (this is quoted in Annie Ryan's book): "A pervading stench of urine, excrement and sweat confronts the visitor." She recorded how people there suffered from pressure sores and urine rashes which went undetected for long periods. She quoted a nurse in a Cork hospital as saying: "Conditions are barely above lice level and are difficult to maintain at that."

I visited Portrane hospital 11/2 years ago. Conditions there then were hardly different to what was described 20 or 40 years ago in this and other hospitals. In several of the sections there was no furniture at all in the day-rooms. People sat or lay on the floor. In the dormitories there was no privacy, in many cases no lockers. Bedclothes were frayed. Often the decor was utterly depressing.

In one unit accommodating 18 men, there were two toilets. One of the toilets had been out of order for over a year. In that same unit the tops of the handles on the wash-hand basins were missing and had been missing for several months. The stench of urine and excrement in some of these units was overpowering. Broken windows were simply boarded up. Some of the doors opening out onto yards were kept in place, just about, with a few nails.

No Minister for Health could be persuaded for 20 years to visit Portrane. Brian Cowen did so last year and some investment is promised. But how is it that there were no "ballistics" over that?

Conditions in prison are another disgrace. Year on year the reports of the Mountjoy Visiting Committee are simply ignored.

Allied to the prisons issue is the drugs crisis. Everyone involved in this knows that the problem can be solved only with a massive regeneration programme in the deprived areas, particularly of Dublin, where the hard drugs crisis prevails. But nothing is done. Not even the measly allocation of funds to provide thoroughly inadequate treatment facilities are used up.

And of course any concerted attempt to alleviate poverty through the fair distribution of the wealth that is being created so abundantly is entirely off the agenda.

Instead we are preoccupied with whether Bertie Ahern did anything wrong in having the Department of Justice contacted over day release for Philip Sheedy and whether he did anything wrong in not disclosing this voluntarily to the Dail. If what Mary Harney said on radio at lunchtime yesterday is to be taken seriously, the Government might fall on this issue.

Of course there is a difficulty for Bertie Ahern in this Sheedy affair. If what Hugh O'Flaherty did was impeachable - that was to speak to a court official about whether the Sheedy case would be re-listed in the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court - how could Bertie Ahern's own action in making representations to the Department of Justice to secure the temporary release of Philip Sheedy not also be impeachable?

Or alternatively, if what Bertie Ahern did was of no consequence - which certainly it was not - then how could it be that what Hugh O'Flaherty did required him to resign from the Supreme Court in disgrace?

The only issues of consequence in the Sheedy affair were the rehearing of sentence in the Dublin Circuit Court in the absence of counsel for the DPP and the alleged attempt to rig the file afterwards. Absolutely nothing else of consequence arises from that affair.

But . . . Tisn't finished.