Reform Starts in The 1960s
The OECD reported on Irish schools and levels of education in 1962-68, as an essential part of the process of Ireland's 1973 accession into the EEC, providing the vital external stimulus for reform. Finally the 1970 Kennedy Report, prepared in 1967-70, though flawed in parts, led to the abolition of the schools over the next decade, starting with Artane in 1969. In the interim, tens of thousands of children had been inmates, some from infancy. Despite frequent complaints and enquiries that called for reforms, the official line until the 1990s was that nobody in government, the church or the civil service really knew what was taking place. Notably, Micheal Martin stated on 13 May 1999 that: The concept of the child as a separate individual with rights came late to this country.
Read more about this topic: Commission To Inquire Into Child Abuse
Famous quotes containing the words reform and/or starts:
“When I go into a museum and see the mummies wrapped in their linen bandages, I see that the lives of men began to need reform as long ago as when they walked the earth. I come out into the streets, and meet men who declare that the time is near at hand for the redemption of the race. But as men lived in Thebes, so do they live in Dunstable today.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“With two thousand years of Christianity behind him ... a man can’t see a regiment of soldiers march past without going off the deep end. It starts off far too many ideas in his head.”
—Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894–1961)