Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

On 21 July 2011, the then Secretary General of the Department of Finance famously stated, "The Government of Ireland pays its debts, always has and plans to do so." Of course, he was talking about the use of billions of euro of Irish taxpayers' money being used to bail out unsecured bank bondholders, because the Government of Ireland does not always pay its debts and, certainly, not when it comes to ordinary citizens. In fact, a rule of thumb that can be ascribed to successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments is that the more vulnerable those who are wronged are, the greater the battle they will have in securing redress.

Just eight days before the Secretary General of the Department of Finance announced that the Government "pays its debts", a secret memo was circulated to Fine Gael and Labour Party Ministers. It set out a political and legal strategy that amounted to a cover-up, denying citizens of Ireland due recourse to the recovery of moneys that were illegally taken from them. It is a familiar story and, shamefully, an all-too-familiar strategy: the treatment of Brigid McCole, who was dragged through the courts in her final months; Vicky Phelan and the other brave CervicalCheck victims, who stood up to attempts to bully them into silence; Louise O'Keefe; the thalidomide survivors; families affected by sodium valproate; and, more recently, the denial of redress to survivors of mother and baby homes. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments have continued heartless, callous and morally wrong strategies to deny the most vulnerable their rights.

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