Ireland is repeating its mother and baby home scandal with its asylum system | Fionn Davenport

The cruelty the country showed towards unmarried mothers festers in the purgatorial process it uses with asylum seekers

The Irish state has done its fair share of apologising in recent years. In 1999, the then-taoiseach Bertie Ahern apologised to the victims of abuse by religious state-run institutions. Ten years and a report into institutional abuse later, his successor, Brian Cowen, apologised again.

In 2013, a visibly emotional Enda Kenny beat his breast about the horrors of the Magdalene laundries, where thousands of women were incarcerated and suffered abuse. In 2019, the taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, twice donned the state's sackcloth-and-ash, first for the sexual abuse of children in day schools and then for the lies told to more than 1,000 women in a cervical screening scandal.