Well, are you angry yet? Or, perhaps more accurately, are you absolutely quivering with a rage that is as visceral as it is impotent?

The exposure of Ireland's very own so called "house of horrors" has touched a nerve not pressed since the first of the Catholic sexual abuse scandals began to slither their tawdry way into the media and the public consciousness.

The sheer depth of the depravity visited upon those innocent children in the Roscommon village seems to have hit the entire country in the guts as we struggle to comprehend how something so utterly hellish could be allowed to continue for so long.

In fact, the reason why something which should be incomprehensible in its scale is touching so many people is that, as anyone from small town Ireland can attest to, this type of thing to a lesser degree, happens all the time.

It would be wrong to suggest, as some have, that this is an entirely unusual occurrence. After all, as the local farmer who was quoted in the Irish Independent said: "Ah, sure these things happen."

And it's exactly that kind of attitude that makes the blood boil.

In fact, the number of people who have freely admitted to the Irish Independent that they knew something horrible was going on, but then quickly qualify that with a self-serving, mealy mouthed qualification that "we never suspected incest" is remarkable. And infuriating.

It's as if to say that somehow chronic neglect and obvious abuse are matters which should be left behind closed doors, but if they had suspected incest they would have stopped being secretive peasants and suddenly become righteous, stand-up citizens?

I find that one a little hard to swallow.

It is this admission from one local that "the dogs on the street knew what is going on" that shows a shameful moral cowardice which makes this case, in many ways, worse than the Fritzl case in Austria.

In that case, nobody else, with the possible exception of the Fritzl's wife, knew what was happening. Here, we have multiple admissions from numerous locals that they knew something horrific was happening in that house.

But, in an awful reflection of Irish society, this could have been pretty much any village in Ireland, in the land where curtains twitch as neighbour looks upon neighbour and everybody knows everybody else's business.

That's one of the main reasons why rural friends of mine admit they got out of where they were born the day after they did the Leaving Cert -- the crushing claustrophobia of small town, small minded life.

The prevailing attitude here would have been that the mother had the right to rear those children any way she wanted, and if that included raping her son, then, as the farmer said: "Sure these things happen".

The more the details emerge, the more this is beginning to sound like the first draft of a Pat McCabe novel, except even McCabe would probably baulk at some of the details.

There's even a touch of the surreal which McCabe would appreciate.

Because when the then Western Health Board (and how many heads are going to roll over this? My guess is none) finally got their act together to try and do something to save these children, they were thwarted in their attempts by a fundamentalist Catholic group.

This is because these idiots would rather have these children beaten and neglected by their good Catholic mother than removed and put into the hands of a heathen, Godless state care system.

Mena Bean Ui Chribin -- crazy name, etc -- has been off the scene for years, but she was once a regular contributor to shows like the Late Late where she would foist upon us her joyless, squalid views about single mothers, divorce, abortion and other hot button issues of the day.

A member of the Catholic Taliban, she was actually quite amusing; a batty old woman with too much time on her hands spending her days railing against approaching dawn of Irish maturity like some Queen Canute.

But whoever gave the financial, legal and moral support to the degenerate, sub-human piece of garbage who dares call herself a "mother" should be relieved that the religion they so slavishly follow is a myth -- because if it was real they would be spending eternity in hell for what they put these children through.

You fancy a piece of real gallows humour? Take a look at Article 41 of our Constitution ...

"The State recognises the Family as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society, and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law.

(1.2) The State, therefore, guarantees to protect the Family in its constitution and authority, as the necessary basis of social order and as indispensable to the welfare of the Nation and the State."

Never have those words turned to ashes in the mouth as they do now.