The BBC has been hounded for having one Jimmy Savile - imagine we have an institution in this country which allegedly had 82 of them.
The Spiritans. Can there be a more inappropriate name for a religious organisation whose priests and teachers abused and destroyed the lives of so many children?
The revelations of decades of abuse at schools run by the Congregation of the Holy Spirit is a very Irish sex scandal in that it concerns children and priests.
Read More: Survivors of abuse at Irish Spiritans order urged to come forward
Of course there are other types which usually involve women and their health, especially the reproductive element, which goes back to the foundation of the State.
No matter how diverse the scandal, they usually follow a similar pattern when they begin to emerge.
In many cases there is first the cover-up, then there is the denial followed by the persecution and stigmatisation of the victims and, when all else fails, attempts to silence those involved.
If some brave soul like Vicky Phelan manages to overcome the odds stacked against them to expose wrongdoing, next comes the crocodile tears and meaningless apologies followed by false claims of lessons learned.
Not so, as 37 years ago another courageous woman, Bridget McCole also tried to fight for justice when the State poisoned over 1,600 women with contaminated blood.
She and the other Hep C scandal victims were warned by the Chief State Solicitor they would be pursued all the way to the Supreme Court if they failed to accept the derisory compensation offered for losing their lives.
Another blindingly obvious trait about Irish scandals is they seldom involve the police, even though crimes may have been committed, as in the case of the abuse by the Spiritans.
When there were at least 82 abusers involved there is every reason to believe that a paedophile ring operated throughout the Spiritans schools.
They couldn’t have attracted so many perverts if they’d advertised for them... unless it was common knowledge it was a safe haven for child abusers.
When I was a boy I was abused by Dr Michael Shine on several occasions at our Lady of Lourdes hospital in Drogheda as were many hundreds of other children in the 1960s and 70s.
It was common knowledge he was abusing children to the extent teachers would jokingly threaten to send boys “up to Dr Shine” if they feigned injury on the football field.
Just this week it emerged that over 100 men who took lawsuits against the religious order which employed convicted child molester Shine had to agree to gagging orders as part of settlement terms.
The chief executive of survivor’s group One In Four, Maeve Lewis, pointed out that Ireland has a serious problem generally when it comes to child abuse and not just with religious bodies, as organisations such as Swim Ireland and Scouting Ireland harboured abusers.
She called for a commission of inquiry into what is it about Irish society that filters through into organisations where it seems it is more important to protect the institution and the offenders rather than children.
Such a commission might also investigate why the Irish State has such an obsession with secrecy and why it will go to extraordinary lengths to cover up its scandals.
Tonight The Late Late show will pay tribute to cervical cancer campaigner Vicky Phelan, despite her specifically asking that no such tributes be made.
Her tragic story made the New York Times on Wednesday which did not paint the Irish State in a very good light.
Readers were told how a young mother dying of cervical cancer was faced with the harsh choice of taking immediate compensation or signing a nondisclosure agreement and settling her medical negligence claim.
The alternative was to go to the expensive and slow-moving courts and risk dying without her family getting a cent. Against her was the full might of the State whose penny-pinching and negligence caused her death but she won and exposed one of the worst health scandals in Irish history.
A subsequent official inquiry revealed at least 220 other Irish women had also developed cancer after botched tests.
Knowing that death was close, she said: “I don’t want your apologies. I don’t want your tributes…I want action. I want change. I want accountability.”
The politicians who are now paying tribute have still not fully delivered on what Vicky Phelan asked. As for accountability, there’s not a chance.
Indeed if the State and the HSE had their way, Vicky Phelan would have gone to her grave without the public ever knowing her name.
That’s the way Ireland works.
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