OPINION: Time to rethink St Patrick's Day in wake of Mother & Baby Home scandals

Just over a week from now, St Patrick's Day will bring hundreds of thousands of citizens onto the streets and into the pubs to celebrate our Irishness, our heritage and our culture.

Enda Kenny will be on hand at the White House to present his last bowl of shamrock to the new American President Donald Trump while our cabinet ministers will scatter to the four corners of the world to bear witness to the greatest marketing exercise a country could ever hope to have. 
But surely this year it must ring all so hollow and vacuous. Wearing silly hats, waving plastic shamrocks and cheering on the marching bands will all seem well, just wrong. Especially now.
The devastating revelations from the Mother and Baby Homes Commission investigation have been truly horrendous to read. And we're told the discoveries in Tuam are just the 'tip of the iceberg'. There could be upwards of 4,000 babies buried - or discarded - in unmarked graves and pits of institutions across the country, Paul Redmond, chairman of the Coalition of Mother and Baby Home Survivors said this week.
The investigating Commission chairman, Judge Yvonne Murphy described the extent of the horror unearthed at Tuam as 'shocking.'
It's against that backdrop that you try to imagine a public sickened to the core by events hidden in plain sight in recent decades wanting to dance a jig and proclaim to the world how wonderful it is to be Irish.
Maybe St Patrick's Day should be an occasion for the Irish people to take a more introspective look at what happened here in our very recent past and reclaim 17th March in memory of all those tragic infants and their mothers - those who never stood a chance under a regime that visited unspeakable horror on them while masquerading as humble servants of God.
Is it not time for the people to reclaim the national holiday and march in solidarity for those who died for the sin of being born out of wedlock, for being abandoned by cowardly men and brutalised by a twisted form of Irish apartheid?
Perhaps, instead of wearing garish green polyester and waving flags, we should don black and carry colourful children's shoes and solemnly parade to Tuam, Bessborough, St Patrick's and Sean Ross Abbey. No marching bands, no floats, no grandstands, just people wanting justice for the dead and the survivors.
In all probability the commerciality of St Patrick's Day will render such thoughts and initiatives impractical and unworkable but the march for justice and the truth will be unstoppable now. It has to be. And only when justice is realised for every tragic infant left to die in these hellholes can we really begin to celebrate a national holiday.

- If you spent time in a mother and baby home and have a story you'd like to share please email ann.casey@meathchronicle.ie in confidence or call 046 9079613