In 2009, the Ryan report into the hideous abuse of children in the industrial school system was published. It was followed, that same year, by the Murphy report into clerical abuse and cover-up in the Dublin Catholic archdiocese. Two worlds were dying together. The sudden and dramatic end of the great delusion of infinite Irish progress towards the nirvana of endless abundance converged with the long, agonized death throes of Mother Church. Ireland found itself at once post-boom and post-Catholic. The time zone it inhabited lay between two bitter aftermaths.
