October edition of the Socialist

From the 1943 Cavan Fire in which 35 children and one adult perished after nuns refused to let girls escape to avoid them being seen in their night-gowns; to the enslavement of poor women in Magdalene Laundries, the last of which closed only in 1996; to the systemic cover-up of child sexual abuse; to the deplorable and sinister infant and child mortality rates in Mother & Baby Homes - the litany of abuse, degradation and oppression presided over by Church and State in Ireland, is simply confounding.