Comprehending Ireland’s Post-Catholic Redress Practice as a Form of Transitional Justice

Abstract

The Irish government has committed to adopting a ‘transitional justice’ approach to an ongoing investigation into potential abuses in a number of Mother and Baby Homes operated by Catholic orders from 1922 to 1998. Though presented as a new departure, this approach is not as novel as its initial presentation by the government suggests. Five previous inquiries into institutional and clerical abuse have revealed how the systematic abuse of women and children was concealed and minimized by the state to protect the power and reputation of the church. The inquiries themselves, the compensation schemes for those in the industrial schools or laundries, and a series of reparative public apologies can be understood as forms of transitional justice. This is so not only because they respond to the needs of victims, but because these processes repair the damage that authorized state wrongdoing during a very different era of church-state relations inflicts upon the present-day political legitimacy of a state that feels compelled to public burnish its secular credentials.