When theocracy, not democracy, ruled Ireland

If the past is a foreign country, the Kerry Babies case seems from another world at another time. Like a bolt from the blue, a shameful controversy believed to have been safely swept under the carpet explodes just as a historic debate is beginning in Dáil Eireann.

The jaw-dropping details, afresh in the public domain, are a salutary reminder of what Ireland was like as recently as the 1980s. Young people are appalled ...