Is all this media fuss completely disinterested?

It is obviously intolerable that an unfortunate woman in Co. Roscommon kept her four children in filthy, inhuman conditions for several years while physically and sexually abusing them. It is shocking that no-one intervened. But at a time of global recession, a new US President, genocide in Gaza and a burgeoning energy crisis in Europe, does it really merit five articles in today's Irish Independent, including an editorial? Have some of our liberal élite seen this as a vindication of their view of how the state is really better at looking after children than parents are?

Take, for example, this piece by Dearbhail MacDonald in the Indo. She goes into the harrowing facts of the case in some detail, but she does not confine herself to them. At the end of the article, she notes crossly that

"[t]he Constitution places enormous barriers in the way of health boards removing children from dangerous situations in their family home. The now-shelved children's rights referendum sought to allow the State to intervene earlier when children are suffering abuse at the hands of their parents and care-givers."

Ah. The Children's Rights Referendum. Knew that was coming somewhere.

Mind you, the High Court did declare, in the case of G v. An Bord Uchtála in 1981, that children have a natural right under the Constitution to have their welfare safeguarded. I do not think the Constitution needs to be mutilated to make it any easier for the state to drag children away from their parents, and the Christian Solidarity Party would oppose such a move.

But not all my peers agree. This evening I overheard some of my fellow Law students on the matter. "They say she was financed by a right-wing Catholic organisation, I think that makes the whole thing really sinister," said one. Another told of a friend, a lawyer, who had said "They'd never have been able to send social workers in because of all that ****ing rights of the family stuff, so they should have gone straight down the Criminal route." [i.e. Criminal Law]

"All that ****ing rights of the family stuff". Indeed.