Tag Archives: Caroline Hurley

Children’s rights in Ireland

Nonviolent News, Readings, , ,

Note of Panel Discussion held in Birr Library, 16th August 2025:

From Cáin Adomnáin to Today – Exploring the Evolution of Children’s Rights in Ireland

by Caroline Hurley

Background

For Heritage Week 2025, the Museum of Childhood Ireland/Músaem Óige na Éireann, teamed up with Birr Library to create a series of exhibitions, workshops and a panel discussion. Entitled Seen And Heard, under the theme, Exploring Our Foundations, the project traced the story of children’s rights in Ireland from Cáin Adomnáin to the present day.

Key among the activities hosted was the Seen and Heard Panel Discussion, ‘From Cáin Adomnáin to Today – Exploring the Evolution of Children’s Rights in Ireland’, from 1.30 to 3.00pm Saturday 16 August 2025. The panel consisted of historians and children’s rights advocates describing and discussing children’s rights from early Irish law to present day protections and future ambitions.

Location choice was not accidental. Birr, Co Offaly became the birthplace of one of the world’s earliest child protection (and international humanitarian) laws – the fascinating Cáin Adomnáin, written in 679 AD. Also known as the Lex Innocentium (Law of Innocents*), Cain Adomnáin dates back to the Synod of Birr in 697 AD. The law gave protection to women, children, clerics and other non-arms-bearing people in time of strife, and was the first such known law in the history of Western Europe, if not the world. A copy of the book, Cáin Adomnáin, illustrated by artist Caroline Conway, is on permanent display in Birr Library.

The event was filmed, for viewing soon on the museum’s website. Irish Sign Language interpreters accompanied speakers. The panel was co-chaired by Eoin Murphy, youth rights citizen advocate; and Marie Baker, former Supreme Court judge with experience in Constitutional law relating to children, now Electoral Commission Chair.

Four panellists took part. Based in Birr, Dr James W. Houlihan is a retired solicitor and historian whose doctoral research culminated in the critically-acclaimed book, Adomnán’s Lex Innocentium and the Laws of War (Four Courts Press, 2020), a detailed exploration of Adomnán’s Text (currently out of print but queued for reprint.) Combining his legal expertise with rigorous historical scholarship, Houlihan situates this early medieval Irish code within the broader evolution of children’s rights.

Donnah Sibanda Vuma works for Limerick based NGO, Doras; supporting and promoting the rights of migrants in Ireland, and has particular concerns about the direct provision system. Donnah is currently undertaking a Masters in Peace and Development Studies.

Eamonn Carroll has practised as a family lawyer for over 30 years, championing child rights in the courts. A longtime family mediator, he spearheaded the establishment of Collaborative Practice for family law in Ireland.

Formerly of the Migrant Rights Center Ireland who organised Young, Paperless and Powerful, a creative youth project for undocumented young people, Mairéad McDevitt is a Dublin based Youth & Community worker and youth migrant rights consultant, focusing on those impacted by immigration policies.

Panel Presentations

Chairperson of Museum of Childhood Ireland, Majella McAllister opened the event, thanking about thirty people present for coming. She outlined elements and goals of ‘Seen and Heard’; the first event on Birr’s Heritage Week programme; fittingly, given the town as birthplace of Cáin Adomnáin/Lex Innocentium. She outlined objectives of the Museum of Childhood Ireland, designed according to United Nations principles, open to citizen participation, and putting into practice the ideal of cherishing all equally. The Museum serves both Irish people and the diaspora. She conveyed apologies from former children’s ombudsman and museum board member, Emily Logan.

Chair Marie Baker introduced James W. Houlihan, world expert and author on the Cáin Adomnáin text, whose subject matter of noncombatant rights and protections during war was not really formally developed again until the twentieth century.

James welcomed everyone to Birr. He framed Cáin Adomnán, translated as the Law of Adomnán, known also as Lex Innocentium, as a child protection measure introduced thirteen centuries ago. Contemporaneous Irish Annals refer to the text and enrolment ceremony. From Donegal, Adomnán was the ninth abbot of Iona, after St. Columba who founded the monastery there. Adomnán used his influence to persuade church and lay leaders to come to Birr to agree his inspired law on the glorious occasion of the 697 Synod convened by him.

The list of guarantors , all of whom probably attended, survives. At the top of the secular list is then Irish High King, Loingsech mac Óengusso, followed by 50 lesser kings. Bishop of Armagh, Fland Feblae mac Scandlin, heads up the list of 40 ecclesiastic leaders. These luminaries, about one hundred, are presumed to have gathered at the gates of St. Brendan’s Monastery, (now in ruins) bordering Emmett Square near Birr library. Remarkable in intent, substance, and delivery, the law was conceived to defend the defenceless, the non-arm-bearing non-combatants; to assure immunity to the harmless and innocent. Relevance to the current moment, in Gaza, Ukraine etc. is glaringly obvious.

Mankind’s humanity was now being commemorated, particularly relating to children, because Adomnán took a radical initiative in what was then an incredibly inegalitarian and hierarchical society where authoritarian kings were unquestioningly obeyed. Dr. Houlihan sketched the social and legal situation in 7th century Ireland. The Brehon Laws applied, with inequitable rules and restitutions linked to status, except when it came to children up to seven years old, who, whether progeny of king or commoner, received equal legal protection.

Also, when an adult female was killed, a significant penalty had to be paid, in contrast to all males over seven, requiring little or none. These rule outliers gave Adomnán enough to make the case that penalties should also be paid for boys killed until they reached manhood. He was able to convince prominent social figures, expected to hold entrenched views and enmities, to change their minds. Historical research confirms that this is the first such law of its kind, prefiguring the Geneva Convention, to be promulgated in Europe and perhaps in the world. As lawmakers flurry to revise shortcomings emerging in international law, the importance of Cáin Adomnáin grows even greater as a foundation stone to build on.

The chair then asked Eoin Carroll to sum up developments in children’s law. He expressed delight at being present, while starkly aware of the theme’s relevance to ongoing global conflicts. Progress had steadily been made away from harsh Victorian statutes, such as corporal punishment, especially with the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Having it written down makes a difference. Eventually Ireland began to draft parallel laws, such as the children’s rights referendum resulting in a 2012 Constitutional amendment prioritising children’s own voices and best interests.

Work in court had changed a lot. The Children’s Rights Alliance did great work. Judges and other parties were receiving appropriate training, resulting in better understandings and outcomes. Disputes about child custody heard in district courts were complex. Authority was giving way to flexibility and support. Court representation for children is now routine, although children in care, especially those with special needs, disabilities, and Travellers, are still often let down by inadequate services. Frequently, agencies have to be pressurised and cajoled into providing services children are entitled to. Accountability generally works, for example, when the court requires named service providers to appear in court. The problem now is not process but availability of resources, impeding implementation of rulings.

Next, the chair introduced Donnah Sibanda Vuma, child advocate who, after coming through Ireland’s international protection system with three children in 2014, brought first-hand knowledge to her role. She commended Ireland’s stance championing children’s rights; less so, failures to enact those rights. She warned that marginalised children were being excluded, and left behind which, in light of Ireland’s history of institutionalisation, was alarming. Would detention centres be condemned in future like Magdalene Laundries? To prevent this, she suggested being ambitious, going for true equality so that no child would ever face street or structural violence, and the most vulnerable would never be abandoned between child protection cracks, as happens to this day.

Mairéad McDevitt agreed that there was a disconnect between laws and process, and how they play out in children’s lives i.e. provisions fall short to address poverty, overcrowding, health needs etc, imperilling safe dignified existences. Today’s legal framework only covers some children. Citing migrants, she demonstrated that migration is very common. Nearly everyone does it at some point. A mindset conflating migration with impermanence leads to assumptions damaging for children, because residency status determines futures and ability to plan. Migrants, especially those undocumented, have fewer options, more obstacles. Destructive features of the family reunification policy ignore circumstances, hampering adjustment. Wealthy Ireland is not rushing to fix these issues. The EC legal framework adds to challenges by not accounting for socio-economic realities like homelessness, which leaves children in dangerous vulnerable places. Statutes are easy; incarnating them, not so much. Ramifications are very serious for children impacted.

The chair noted that the citizenship referendum set progress back, with paternalism remaining in the system, but in any case, the court could not be held responsible for all failures.

Panel Discussion & Close

A discussion then took place about what could be done to improve matters. Suggestions included: adopting the Lundy model, ensuring children have choices, agency, and spaces to play, listening that isn’t just a box-ticking exercise; informing and educating all parties and the public; instituting child and family approaches cross-departmentally for all policies; harnessing political will which not only drives narratives but determines systemic results; creating opportunities to talk and reduce hate; and service auditing, which proves effective.

The chair said that children need to know that rights come with obligations, for example, if the voting age was reduced to 16, a controversial topic open to political manipulation. The chair said the youth have been left a mess to clean up. At least reports of the Ombudsman show they were listening. and the role was advancing, including more recommendations on homelessness, IPAS (International Protection Accommodation Services), and other urgent hindrances. On that note of hope, the event was brought to a close.

Related Activities

Concomitantly in the library, a thought-provoking exhibition created by the Museum of Childhood Ireland, working with artist Fergal McCarthy, explored the history of children’s rights in Ireland. This work incorporated school visits with children in Birr and Dublin and workshops with local Birr groups Biorra le Gaeilge and Elm Grove House, IPAS Centre and was carried out using the Lundy Model of participation. Open to adults and children of all ages, the exhibition highlighted fascinating children’s rights milestones through imaginative and curiosity-sparking drawings by the artist and collaborating groups. Creative drop-in workshops with the artist were held through the week. A specially-created suitcase—filled with interactive games and hands-on activities about children’s rights— stayed with the exhibition in Birr Library until Saturday 23 August, offering ongoing opportunities for discovery and engagement throughout Heritage Week.

Endnotes

*On 21 September 2024, International Day of Peace, Lex Innocentium 21st Century was launched in Birr and Lorrha as a new people’s or popular law on war, based on the original 697 CE law enacted in Birr at the Synod instigated by Adomnán, abbot of Iona, as reported here – https://innatenonviolence.org/wp/2024/10/01/news-october-2024/

Author’s reflection: law and money only go so far. Auditing and accountability as mentioned engage commitment and action, while fairness and kindness improve everything making disappointments tolerable. Regaining humanity is the shared universal necessity.

Nuclear power is a regrets industry – Some facts

Nonviolent News, Readings, , , ,

by Caroline Hurley

1. Esteemed international climate solutions organisation Project Drawdown cautions against relying on nuclear power compared to other solutions because “At Project Drawdown, we consider Nuclear Power a “regrets” solution. It has potential to avoid emissions, but carries many concerns as well” – https://drawdown.org/solutions/nuclear-power

The five hundred odd nuclear power plants currently producing about 10 per cent of the world’s energy should be wound down for the serious and enduring liabilities they represent.

In 2023, the first nuclear power project in the U.S. featuring a small modular reactor was cancelled after a 53% surge in costs – https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Pioneering-Nuclear-Project-Gets-Canceled-After-Costs-Surge.html

The cost of Hinkley Point C, Britain’s first new nuclear power plant in decades, was originally priced at £16 billion. That made it the most expensive building in the world, and that was before costs began to spiral upwards. The latest estimate is that it will cost £32 billion. Promising lower bills with nuclear power makes no sense. Nuclear energy is the only type of energy whose production costs have been steadily soaring year after year.

2. Plant operations routinely release by-products: long-lived fission elements including radioactive plutonium-239, isotopes of iodine, caesium, radon and selenium, mixed in with minor actinides like curium and americium. Huge volumes of water are depleted. Safe nuclear waste storage methods have not yet been invented. Vitrification comes closest, where chemicals are extracted from high-level waste, folded into glass rods, put in sealed steel containers and then buried, in salt preferably, to delay melting, with fingers crossed. Deep geological disposal is proposed for long-term management but remains controversial, having to withstand up to millions of years of half-live releases, and entailing transport and other hazards. Lower-level waste is sealed in cement or recycled. This dooms future generations. If any kind of nuclear reactors had been constructed as part of the Stonehenge or Newgrange complexes, 21st century people would still have to manage the radioactive waste. The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, about the size of County Kerry, will remain dangerously radioactive for hundreds of years, maybe more. It has expanded in recent years.

3. In a country where neutrality is still cherished, Ireland should oppose civilian nuclear facilities which elsewhere are repeatedly adopted for military purposes. Anything from 15,000 to 25,000 nuclear weapons and counting now burden the planet, from a cumulative production tally of about 130,000 bombs, most made in either America or Russia, and smaller numbers in up to thirty other countries. The US alone ran over a thousand nuclear bomb tests between 1945 and 1992, each more lethal than the last. Another thousand were carried out elsewhere. At least two hundred nuclear reactor accidents occurred, many non-reported, as Soviet authorities had hoped for Chernobyl. A 2019 Sellafield leak did not make the news.

4. Some sources directly attribute over two million human deaths to atmospheric nuclear testing. Negligence during tests in the 1950s, when milk was contaminated, earned the US government a guilty verdict by a judge in 1984. Record volumes of radiation released raised health risks for millions of people. The United Nations announced in 2000 that nuclear radioactivity has spread across the entire earth. Nature everywhere now bears the tattoo. The Anthropocene was born with detonation of the first atomic bomb in the New Mexico Desert on July 16th, 1945, copper-fastening the Great Acceleration, of human progress and associated earth degradation. The revised standard to minimise dangerous releases is zero yield from sub-critical tests.

5. Joshua Frank, author of Atomic Days (2022), recalls the single largest anti-nuclear protest ever, which took place in New York City in September 1979 when an estimated 200,000 people rallied in Battery Park, calling for an immediate shut-down of Three Mile Island and an end to nuclear power proliferation globally. The global environmental movement sprang in large part from this era, which involved a very lively Irish element (Carnsore Point).

These invigorating actions, along with the 1986 disaster at Chernobyl, put a halt to the construction of new nuclear plants in the United States. Since the accident, up to eighty per cent of Belarus children present with somatic pathologies, including deformities, cellular irregularities and age-inappropriate conditions like stroke, cardiac arrest, and neonatal cardiac cavities known as Chernobyl heart. Countless bodies of workers and patients absorbed isotopes sufficiently to classify them as walking radioactive waste. Plans for dozens of plants were shelved. By the mid-1980s the remarkably successful anti-nuclear power movement shifted its focus, joining the rapidly growing nuclear freeze movement, which was working to put the brakes on the global nuclear arms race.

6. How shameful that in the name of climate action, some are trying to undo this monumental success by prescribing nukes as a remedy? Of many reasons to oppose nuclear power. seven stand out: nuclear energy is not carbon neutral, huge mining impacts, nuclear power’s ties to atomic weapons, extreme waste issues, risks of accidents, and costs. See https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/09/09/the-case-against-nuclear-power-a-primer/

Numerous individuals and organisations have emerged in Ireland advocating for nuclear power as a major climate fix for a clean energy transition, particularly since, after a very close vote by lawmakers in July 2022, the European Parliament approved amended EU taxonomy rules labelling investments in gas and nuclear power plants as climate-friendly. Some regard this as hijacking the EU’s key instrument of green policy, “openly accomplished through a campaign of misinformation conducted by the nuclear lobby.” – https://www.euronews.com/2023/08/25/sustainability-has-lost-its-meaning-as-the-nuclear-lobby-triumphs

Groups already participating in environmental projects around the country are being especially targeted to become poster-child converts to nuclear energy by industry influencers and Key Opinion Leaders, whose PR profiles are designed to project authority and trustworthiness. Lazarsfield’s milestone 1950s marketing study showed that driving consumer demand involves coaching “the effectiveness of interpersonal relations at each stage of the diffusion process”. It’s about capturing hearts and minds, even perhaps reassuring with convenient untruths, such as the claims made about reliable affordable small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs), touted as solutions since the 1950s. The only one under construction in America was cancelled in 2023 due to unaffordability and, not counting just two prototypes under test, one in Russia and one in China, no other SMRs are in commercial use yet in the world.

However, if governments can be persuaded to take a risk on these boondoggles, whose record of breakdown and incidents contradict reliability claims, massive transfers of taxpayers’ money beckon. Governments also fall for other trade tricks, for example in France, the state had to buy electricity from a malfunctioning over-centralised energy sector, and run point heaters in summertime to destroy surplus electricity (for a fee) — though produced and purchased, it could not be used anywhere. Intercountry grids will hardly address such warped bloats and glitches.

7. In their book, The Menace of Atomic Energy, published 50 years ago, Ralph Nader and John Abbotts revealed to readers that the person most responsible for developing American nuclear reactors, Dr Alvin Weinberg, admitted he would prefer solar energy if its cost could be brought down to less than 2.5 times the cost of nuclear energy. Solar panels can be installed quickly, with minimal disruption to nature. Methods to reduce the embodied energy used up in panels and improve end-of-life disposal progress steadily.

In 2020, the International Energy Agency (IEA) declared solar electricity the cheapest in history: at least four times cheaper than nuclear. Rare mention of nuclear energy being the most expensive signals the lobbying power of this massive miasmic industry.

In Germany, plans to open a nuclear reprocessing plant at Wackersdorf in Bavaria were discontinued in 1989 because of major public protests. The experience converted former lead nuclear exponent Dr Franz Alt to the benefits of renewable energy (RE). Alt coined the phrase, “solar panels for peace”, echoing President Eisenhower’s 1950s slogan, “atoms for peace”, referring to using fissile nuclear material for civilian electricity production not weapons. The monstrous consequences of accidents or conflict prove nuclear production poses a persistent security threat.

8. Decentralised energy independence based on 100% clean renewables is the eco alternative because, beyond its attraction as a target in the event of invasion, centralised electricity generation makes the grid unstable, and an unstable grid makes power supply unstable. Ireland with its already very centralised supply has a very high System Average Interruption Duration Index (the indicator of supply reliability), much higher than countries with a decentralised supply like Denmark or Germany. Local photovoltaic power generation means independence from burdensome or mistaken government and market forces.

Chronic above-average prices are predicted in the UK due to its large nuclear power plants and a lack of onshore Renewable Energy power plants. Power monopolies reinforcing their own dominance pose major threats to economies. Since Ireland’s electricity supply is linked to the UK grid, power price increases there are felt here.

The Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) warned that crises such as the Ukraine war “makes it positively clear that we must invest in a secure, reliable, resilient, decentralized, democratic, and 100% clean and renewable energy system. Energy independence and climate change are both issues of national security”. Ending this dependency is urgent both on environmental and peace-and-justice grounds.

9. In her 2019 book, Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future, Kate Brown shows that the US and other countries censored and destroyed evidence of radiation’s long-term biological toxicity, especially following low to moderate doses, which delay symptoms, meaning millions of impaired people are excluded from casualty counts. She hardly needed to mention the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) ignominious but still extant 1959 agreement to desist from investigating and reporting the human health risks of nuclear radiation, made with US-sponsored nuclear advocate, the extremely powerful interest group, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Those who tried to probe atomic poisoning could find themselves fired, arrested or worse. The 2023 film La Syndicaliste gives a feel for what inquirers are up against. Such obstacles stymie the demand for proper wide-ranging studies into the actual consequences of massive lasting contamination of living beings. Brown’s retrieval of scattered reports by citizens, public servants and independent scientists whose perspectives clash with authority’s accounts of limited harm, sets the record straight. https://drb.ie/articles/were-all-hot-now/

In mid-sixties America, Dr John Gofman, cholesterol pioneer and inventor of the Linear Non-Threshold model, wondered about radiation’s impact on the human body, and initiated large-scale research. He and his colleague Dr Tamplin reviewed data from Japan’s Life-Span Study of atomic bomb victims. Observing how cancer and genetic injury so often succeeded radiation poisoning, Gofman and Tamplin concluded in1969 that safety guidelines for low-level exposure were way too high and recommended their reduction by ninety per cent. The US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) disputed the findings, and General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, promptly ordered confiscation of the exhaustive medical documentation used, depriving humanity of this unique trove.

As Brown recounts, result reports were destroyed in 1973, and another independent researcher, Thomas Mancuso, fired in 1977. In the 1990s, Joseph Lyon encountered insider obstruction when gathering statistics for the National Cancer Institute (NCI) on elevated sickness after Nevada tests: a further example of the high-level sabotage Brown repeatedly detected. Experts finally agreed in 1996 they were wrong, some might say criminally, to doubt the severity and prevalence of radioactive diseases in Chernobyl. Rather than safety guidelines being lowered, however, the trend is to raise them farther after each big nuclear event affecting populations and their homes, foods and workplaces, as if the logistics of sane response otherwise is too overwhelming. 2023 research confirms the disproportionately high and cumulative persistence of radioactive contamination – https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.est.3c03565#

Acknowledging Gofman’s work, the National Academy of Science carried out an enormous study on the biological effects of ionising radiation, or BEIR, for short. Findings confirmed warnings sounded by Gofman, yet even his advice to at least locate nuclear plants away from built-up areas was ignored.

10. The radiation that can cause severe burns, systemic sickness and death makes up fifteen per cent of a nuclear bomb’s output. Just fifty of today’s bombs could kill two hundred million people. In 1947, the Bulletin of the Atomic Sciences invented the Doomsday Clock. Sixty years later, in 2007, the minute hand moved forward two minutes, from seven to five minutes to midnight. Ten years later, in 2017, it advanced another two and a half minutes due to extra risks from nuclear terrorism, rogue state arms acceleration and general nuclear renewal. Since 2023, it’s closer again, at 90 seconds to midnight. The taxonomy listing nuclear energy as green is emboldening for greenwashing companies. Who wouldn’t love a hazard-free clean energy? It’s like magic – until a closer look is taken. State services should ensure adequate and independent expertise is in place to compel transparency, corporate governance, and public awareness and safety. Instead, opinion formers flourish as they exhort people to be optimistic about a future presented as high-tech, nature-blind, urban and ever more prosperous. Realistically though, since the nuclear industry inhabits the same business spaces as fossil fuel companies, simply choose nuclear to increase humanity’s chance of soonest going broke, economically, environmentally and morally, on the way to midnight and extinction.

Finally, an important reference is the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2023

https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/-World-Nuclear-Industry-Status-Report-2023-.html