Sins of the past haunt citizens in the present

The National Maternity Hospital decision is both financially inexplicable and wholly unhelpful

The present National Maternity Hospital at Holles Street Pic: RollingNews.ie

The Sisters of Charity was one of the organisations involved in running the notorious Magdalene laundries, where generations of women and children were subjected to hard labour and hidden away from the view of the rest of Irish society.

The Magdalene laundries - as well as a shocking number of other institutional abuses by the Catholic Church - are correctly regarded as a shameful legacy for which neither the Irish state nor the ...