The Irish government's radical response to the Ferns inquiry into decades of child abuse by priests who - unlike their victims - enjoyed the protection of the church, dramatises the remarkable difference between political culture on either side of the Irish Sea.
In Britain, the state totters from one child abuse crisis to another, putting social workers in the stocks for failing to protect children, colluding in an inquisition against doctors for intervening, and then remaining mute while yet another inquiry exposes the disastrous effects of the Government's retreat from investigation.
The politics of child protection is driven by the amazing success of accused adults' movements. They have used complaints procedures to great effect, to sway the Government and to intimidate and discredit the child protection professions.
The effect has been shattering. We as a society have still not worked out whose side we are on - the children, or the accused adults.
In Ireland, by contrast, society has thrown itself into a great cathartic national conversation, produced by the crest of revelations of abuse by nuns and priests in orphanages, schools, parishes and seminaries. The evidence of abuse in childhood is being brought by adult survivors who have been calling both church and state to account, and who have been enlisted by the state to help sort this thing out.
This work of self-discovery began when Albert Reynolds resigned as Taoiseach a decade ago over his government's failure to deal with an abusive priest. It was consolidated with the extraordinary decision by the state to set up public hearings by the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, an Institutional Redress Board to compensate victims of abuse in childhood, and a confidential committee to privately hear testimony from the survivors, which will be lodged as a national archive of abuse.
This week the government is setting up a new inquiry into abuse by members of the church in Dublin, and it will also oblige all dioceses to account for the response to any complaints of abuse by clerics since 1975.
So, while Britain is shutting up the survivors, the Irish state has regarded child abuse as so grievous that it has sponsored something akin to a truth commission. This is a noble endeavour that honours the import- ance of testimony as a vector both for the individual survivor and for the society that needs to know itself.
