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WORLD NEWS Wednesday 13 January 2021

Irish PM says ‘perverse’ morality drove unwed mothers’ homes

By JILL LAWLESS said about 56,000 unmar-
Associated Press ried mothers and about
LONDON (AP) — Ireland’s 57,000 children had lived in
prime minister said Tues- the homes it investigated,
day that the country must with the greatest number
“face up to the full truth of admissions in the 1960s
of our past,” as a long- and early 1970s.
awaited report recounted The last of the homes did
decades of harm done by not shut until 1998.
church-run homes for un- “While mother and baby
married women and their homes were not a pecu-
babies, where thousands of liarly Irish phenomenon, the
infants died. Prime Minister proportion of Irish unmar-
Micheal Martin said young ried mothers who were ad-
women and their children mitted to mother and baby
had paid a heavy price for homes or (state-run) county
Ireland’s “perverse religious homes in the 20th century
morality” in past decades. was probably the highest in
“We had a completely the world,” the report said.
warped attitude to sexu- The commission said that
ality and intimacy. Young the women’s lives “were
mothers and their sons and blighted by pregnancy
daughters paid a terrible In this file photo dated Thursday, Dec. 10, 2020, Ireland’s Prime Minister Micheal Martin speaks as outside marriage, and the
price for that dysfunction,” he arrives at the European Council building in Brussels. Associated Press responses of the father of
he said. their child, their immedi-
Martin said he would make stomach flu. The report said in overwhelmingly Roman death certificates for near- ate families and the wider
a formal apology on behalf “the very high mortality Catholic Ireland with a his- ly 800 children who died community.
of the state in Ireland’s par- rates were known to local tory of abuses in church- at the former Bon Secours “The vast majority of chil-
liament on Wednesday. and national authorities at run institutions, including Mother and Baby Home in dren in the institutions were
The final report of an inquiry the time and were record- the shunning and shaming Tuam, County Galway in ‘illegitimate’ and, because
into the mother-and-baby ed in official publications.” of unwed mothers, many of western Ireland -- but could of this, suffered discrimina-
homes said that 9,000 chil- But, the document went whom were pressured into only find a burial record for tion for most of their lives,”
dren died in 18 different on, “there is no evidence of giving up babies for adop- one child. the report added.
mother and baby homes public concern being ex- tion. Investigators later found The prime minister said
during the 20th century. Fif- pressed about conditions Church-run homes in Ire- a mass grave contain- the report “presents all of
teen percent of all children in mother and baby homes land housed orphans, un- ing remains of babies and Irish society with profound
in the homes died, almost or about the appalling married pregnant women young children in an un- questions.”
double the nationwide mortality among the chil- and their babies for most of derground sewage struc- “What has been described
infant mortality rate, the dren born in these homes, the 20th century. The institu- ture on the grounds of the in this report wasn’t im-
report said. Major causes even though many of the tions have been subject to home, which was run by an posed on us by any foreign
included respiratory infec- facts were in the public intense public scrutiny since order of Catholic nuns and power,” he said. “We did
tions and gastroenteritis, domain.”The inquiry is part historian Catherine Cor- closed in 1961 this to ourselves, as a soci-
otherwise known as the of a process of reckoning less in 2014 tracked down The commission of inquiry ety. “q
No choice: Dutch PM extends coronavirus lockdown by 3 weeks

By MIKE CORDER schools and nonessential so far avoided during the
Associated Press shops are closed, along pandemic — in the future.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands with public venues such as “We are in a serious new
(AP) — Dutch Prime Minis- cinemas, museums and li- situation,” Rutte said, refer-
ter Mark Rutte extended his braries. There also are strict ring to soaring infections
country’s tough five-week limits on the size of gather- in Britain. Health Minister
lockdown by a further ings both indoors and out- Hugo de Jonge said that
three weeks Tuesday amid side. the variant now makes up
concerns that infection Rutte said that for the stu- 2-5% of Dutch infections.
rates are not falling quickly dents who are still allowed but “the expectation is that
enough and fears about to attend class — children it will, just as in England, get
the new more transmissible preparing for their final high the upper hand.”
variant first detected in the school exams and vulner- Rutte’s announcement
United Kingdom. able children — 1.5-meter came hours after the Dutch
“Almost everybody will un- social distancing will now public health institute an-
derstand that there was apply in schools, where nounced that the number An employee of the Municipal Health Service GGD prepares
no other choice because possible. of new coronavirus infec- a Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to be administered to
numbers are not falling He added that the govern- tions in the country had fall- a health care worker at a coronavirus vaccination facility in
fast enough and we are ment has asked health au- en for the second week in Houten, central Netherlands, Friday, Jan. 8, 2021.
Associated Press
now also have to face the thorities for advice about a row, calling the decrease
threat of the British corona whether a curfew would “the first effect” of the na- week fell 12% to 49,398, the tients in intensive care units
variant,” Rutte said, as he help drive down infection tionwide lockdown that institute said, while hospital declined by 12%.
said the lockdown will last rates, raising the possibility began in mid-December. admissions for people with The overall Dutch death toll
until Feb. 9. of a curfew — something Confirmed new COVID-19 the coronavirus fell 18% from COVID-19 now stands
Under the lockdown, all that the government has infections over the last and new COVID-19 pa- at more than 12,500.q