The public consensus in the wake of the Ryan report on institutional abuse was that, whatever else we did in response to the horrific findings, we would never as a nation allow such despicably cruel ill-treatment of children in any form of care situation again.

But this past week has witnessed another devastating exposé, this time of abuses in nursing homes for the elderly.

We are treated yet again to a litany of horrors of a kind we believed, or hoped, were now firmly in that dark, miserable, shameful past: physical and verbal assaults, institutional bullying, widespread negligence, humiliating treatment of infirm, utterly vulnerable patients.

The HSE had better address this issue with the absolute urgency it deserves, and anyone with relatives or loved ones in nursing homes should check carefully that they are being properly treated.

In his book, Founded on Fear, Peter Tyrell recalled his experience of institutional abuse at Letterfrack industrial school.

Here he describes a typical scene from his lost childhood: "…I have now been beaten several times daily for weeks, and when I go to the refectory for meals my hands are sweating. My sight is getting blurred and I am unsteady on my feet. I am hungry but when I eat the food will not stay down.

"I get bad dreams in my sleep. I am always running away, but there is a man behind me, and he is getting closer and closer. I want to scream but I can't. I now wake up and I am sweating all over. I want a drink of water but I am afraid to go in the dark. I try to keep awake because I am terrified to go asleep…"

The Ireland of Peter's childhood did next to nothing to challenge, let alone stop, the perpetrators of that abuse.

Will we now stand by as a nation as our elderly… yesterday's children, are victimised behind the walls of nursing homes?

John Fitzgerald

Callan,

Co Kilkenny