WE NEED TWO APOLOGIES FROM MICHEÁL
TAOISEACH Micheál Martin is set to apologise in the Dáil today to yet another group of people wronged by the State and its agents in the past. This time, it is those affected by the mother and baby homes scandal.
Martin should also say a second sorry over the leaking of sensitive details of an investigating commission’s final report into the crisis to a journalist. That information ran in a newspaper last Sunday ahead of the official release of the report yesterday, and was dripped into the public domain despite a promise to representatives of the tens of thousands of living victims of the scandal that they’d be the first to see it.
For the record, Martin yesterday said nobody from his office was responsible. The leak is a lesser issue than the first – for which apologies are being offered – but it’s still very important. That premature disclosure wasn’t just an enormous error of judgement. It was deeply hurtful to the many people waiting for the report as a step towards putting things right, who had been assured they’d see it before it was published, to brace themselves for its shocking content before the media covered it.
The person who made the leak must have known that any newspaper getting such an exclusive drop would give it enormous prominence and that the rest of the media would have no option but to follow it up.
It would be wrong to assume too that it was unauthorised. It may well have been authorised unofficially, but on the basis that responsibility for any such decision would be denied later if challenges were brought or investigations made.
To repeat: all of this before the affected people had their chance to digest what was in the longawaited official report.
Upsetting
Why would anyone do that, given t he upsetting detail involved, unless someone cynically saw some political advantage for the Government?
The news story highlighted the things the Government would do in response to the report, including many of the things announced yesterday. It appeared to be all designed to make the Government look sympathetic and effective, to create a positive halo for an administration embattled over its failed efforts to tackle Covid-19.
And a further twist. The Taoiseach and his advisers were not blindsided when they opened their papers last Sunday morning. They had been asked by the newspaper for comments and had given them, on the record.
Martin was quoted saying the report was ‘shocking and difficult to read’, and he described as ‘extraordinarily sad and cruel’ the experience of many women and children in the homes. The Taoiseach said a ‘ series of actions’ would follow the publication, highlighting that yesterday’s Cabinet meeting would discuss, as a ‘priority’, the changing of the Adoption and Tracing Bill to allow people affected by the scandal access to information on their biological mothers.
Many of the expected announcements were made yesterday, and more too. The apology that will be given in the Dáil today will undoubtedly be sincere, even though campaigners fear it might be empty and with little follow-up of benefit.
Yet survivors are entitled to ask: how shocked was Martin when he discovered that yesterday’s official events had been pre-empted in a Sunday newspaper? Why didn’t the Taoiseach refuse to talk to the newspaper on the basis that it would not be appropriate to comment on a report his Government had not published as yet? If the Taoiseach felt he had to respond because the paper had details of the report, then why didn’t he arrange on Saturday to make the report available immediately to the people who were already due to see it on Tuesday?
After all, cast your mind back to September 2018 and how, as leader of the Opposition, he reacted to the premature leaking of the Scally Report on the cervical cancer scandal, berating the then government for what he believed was an addiction to manipulating media coverage. He said: ‘More cynical and cruel behaviour in terms of the leaking of this report. How did it happen? It’s wrong that it happened. It’s more of this spin, spin, spin.
‘We’re fed up with this play-acting, everything has to be leaked, everything is spin.
‘It’s either a combination of immaturity or cynicism that they behave in this manner, people are fed up of this game-playing, trying to set the agenda.
‘It’s cruel to the victims of this scandal who should have been the first to see the report.’
That was then – now he is in power. But he tells us his office was not responsible for this, and in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we must accept that.
It may be telling that too that Minister for Children Roderic O’Gorman was not quoted in Sunday’s news story. Was he not asked for comment? O’Gorman seems to have been furious about the publication, attacking in a statement on Sunday lunchtime, and later that night asking the secretary of the Department of An Taoiseach to investigate.
Sensitivity
Nor were there any quotes from any spokespeople of the groups representing the survivors.
What the news story had were some upsetting details of the sensitive personal testimony of mothers and children still living. It reported that counselling would be made available to those affected. In a bitter irony, no counselling may be offered to those who read it f i rst in the newspaper.
I’m not going to attach blame to the Sunday newspaper for its publication of this news story, even though I know there are people who believe it should not have done so.
When somebody hands a major story to a newspaper, it is most unlikely to refuse to publish it on the grounds of sensitivity. Newspapers are in the business of getting people to buy their publications. I’m a former newspaper editor so I would be hypocritical to offer such criticism. Had the same situation been presented to me, I would have published and been damned. But I would also have been aware that I was being used. This was not investigative journalism or anything close to it. This wasn’t some brave whistle-blower releasing a document that would have been kept secret otherwise. This was, of course, an attempted PR exercise by someone in power, albeit it seems that in the end nobody benefited.