One cannot help but compare and contrast the response of RTé news and current affairs to the recent stories concerning the Murphy report, and the HSE figures on child abuse/mortality.

The former was given fanfare treatment by the taxpayer-funded broadcaster, but as is usual with RTé coverage of matters pertaining to the Catholic church, distortion was very much the order of the day.

A full reading of the facts (as opposed to RTé's distortions) casts the Vatican's response in a much more favourable light, and indeed raises questions about the methodology of the Murphy report.

In stark contrast, simultaneously we are given the horrific figures from the HSE that almost 200 children died in its care over the last 10 years.

This monumental revelation, surely worthy of rocking any normal state to its foundations, was virtually ignored by RTé, and indeed by most of the liberal commentariat of Irish society.

Why am I not surprised?

Eric Conway

Balreask Village

Navan, Co Meath