I usually like to limit this blog to my own rants, whether they are enjoyable or not (hey, I always enjoy them!). But Kevin Myers' opinion piece, "There's never been a safer time for children" (Irish Independent, July 19, 2011) made the cut, in part because it is, well, enjoyable and because I'm probably not going to rant today (but don't hold me to it):
As the next step in the current calm and rational debate on child protection, what about this: why don't we kick a Catholic priest to death every day? To be sure, there aren't many of them around any more, and most are over 60: all the more reason to start kicking, before they're all gone! And then who will we kick? Oh who would be in a lynch mob when there's no one to lynch? Stupid question: mobs always find someone to lynch.
The Government is now effectively handing a legal charter to every hysteric, every troublemaker, every malcontent and every evil-doer, with its insane proposals effectively to make it a criminal offence for anyone not to disclose "information" that a child is being sexually or physically abused. What is information? What is abuse? How long is a piece of string? And where does this nonsense stop? When the last garda disappears on the latest paedophile wild goose chase, as the streets of our cities are surrendered to violent thugs and urinating drunks?
Let's be clear. There has never been a safer time or place for children than modern Ireland. A Catholic priest is as likely to sexually abuse a child today as he is to organise bullfights in a confessional. Introducing major legislation to prevent fresh child abuse is like revisiting the Repeal of the Corn Laws.
And no, I'm not going to declare my loathing of child-abuse, or of cannibalism, or slave galleys, or human sacrifice or suicide bombers. Few things are quite so witless as the loud-mouthed morality-contest between street-corner preachers denouncing the obvious. And who amongst that forlorn group that passes for the Dail opposition is ever going to dare oppose the Government's "child-protection" lunacies that will soon masquerade as law?
Children are already grotesquely overprotected. Childhood is not childhood anymore but a permanent padded cell, in which obese mothers in randomly-halted cars collect their obese offspring outside the colleges of corpulence that our schools have become. This is before a shrieking Frances Fitzgerald, "Minister for Children", enters the fray. Listen to her please: "Let me declare again that the days of voluntary compliance are over when it comes to child protection. The new legislation I am bringing forward will provide for a strong system of inspection and oversight and the need to provide demonstrable evidence that the guidance is being implemented correctly across all sectors."
"A strong system of inspection and oversight": in other words, a paradise for snoopers, snitches and, most of all, government bureaucrats. So which branch of the public service is to be the model for this "strong system of inspection"? The HSE, and its 35-hour week social workers? The banking inspectorate? FAS? The senior civil servants who exempted themselves from pay cuts? Go on, Frances: who?
Read the entire piece on the Independent site. For some helpful background to the situation on Ireland, read this Catholic World Report piece:
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