EDITORIAL: People in power can do good things and do you know how? They just decide to...

The majority of Eamonn Wynne’s brilliant article on Clonmel man Kieran Lyons on page six of this week's Nationalist is absolutely heartbreaking.

Kieran is one of 40 Irish thalidomide victims who are seeking compensation and an apology for the delays in alerting women to the drug’s effect on unborn children.

The popular DJ says “this situation isn’t of the present Government’s making but they can finish this for once and for all, and let us get on with our lives”.

People in power can do good things and do you know how?

They just decide to.

What happened to Kieran and the other victims is harrowing and imagine the pain their families and especially their mothers went through and the State has essentially ignored them for decades.

It is not right and this Government needs to act. It only takes one person, one Minister, one Taoiseach to decide to address this matter and give these victims some peace and allow them to get on with their lives.

In the article on page six, Kieran says he is “called the unacknowledged, one of ten people in the country whose papers can’t be found or that have been destroyed”.

It is a damning indictment on this country that the State has yet to acknowledge its failures in the delays surrounding the public health warning and the effects of the drug on babies.

Kieran has told The Nationalist that “because we’re not thousands of people, they’re ignoring us”.

How many more years do these victims have to be ignored? Have successive Governments just been waiting for these poor people to die off so that the powers that be can consign the controversy to the history books?

For the victims of this drug they are living the consequences of its effects every day and they’re owed some form of redress and apology from the State.

At this stage, it is just about common decency and acknowledging with actions not words what these victims are going through.