We should be told how much this debacle cost

IT’S risible that the Government is insisting that compensation payments to Joanne Hayes, her daughter and siblings, should remain private, as revealed in this newspaper last week.

Charlie Flanagan says such confidentiality is to honour Joanne Hayes’s request for privacy. Nonsense.

The Justice Minister must know that Joanne Hayes’s privacy was well and truly shredded during the Kerry Babies Scandal in 1984.

First her privacy was torn apart by gardaí and then by Judge Kevin Lynch in the subsequent judicial whitewash.

That’s why she deserves recompense now.

Informing the public how much the State eventually pays to Joanne Hayes will not affect her privacy in the slightest.

Anyway, we’re entitled to know the full measure, in money terms, of what multiple wrongdoing and injustices actually cost. Because, it’s OUR money.