Ireland’s last nuns are dying out. Can we condemn their abuses – and admit the good they did too? | Dearbhail McDonald

I helped expose the grotesque hypocrisy of the Catholic church. But I owe so much to the nuns who formed me

The 1990s witnessed the collision of three tectonic plates that are still shaping the course of Irish history: the Celtic Tiger, the peace process and the decline of the Catholic church.

Legacy is all around us: the legacy of boom and bust, the legacy of the Troubles and, almost 30 years after the catastrophic eruption of the clerical and institutional abuse scandals, Ireland is still coming to terms with the legacy of an unholy communion between church and state. Anger over the institutional response of the Catholic church to the abuse scandals, and its continued failure to take responsibility for the systemic cover-up of those abuses, is still visceral and ever-present.

Dearbhail McDonald is an Irish journalist and author. The Last Priests in Ireland airs on 15 January at 9.35pm on RTE One. The Last Nuns in Ireland airs on 16 January at 10.15pm