The report found that the religious orders (hugely wealthy in Ireland, enormous land holdings) made no profit from the enslavement of these girls, but broke even. Considering that they were taking fees from adoptive parents (including many in the United States), and that the workers were badly fed, and the laundries took in payment for every sheet and shirt washed, this seems absolutely implausible.

This report will undoubtedly be followed by a tribunal that will find out some at least of the truth.

Big Al, by the way, the unionists would never be run by Dublin. Believe me, in any possible united Ireland, the Northerners, who have become so politically savvy and acute over the last 100 years, would be at the very least in equal charge. Whether this would mean less political corruption, of course, is a different question.

By the way, there's another scandal in the making in Ireland, and I'm sure also in other jurisdictions across Europe: the brutal and scandalous neglect of asylum seekers, especially the many children who arrive without parents and find themselves in the tender care of the State. Many of these children have disappeared in Ireland in recent years, and the number of children who have died in State care is a disgrace and a ruination.