Reponses to Kevin Myers Incitement to hatred or provocation to debate?

What a week. What a fortnight. For one-parent families. For the Old Lady of d'Olier Street. For the media in general.

Edward Walsh started it all with his comments on 27 January about "state-incentivised" lone parenthood.

In spite of debates with the One Parent Exchange Network (OPEN), on local and national radio and ample coverage of the real picture of lone parent poverty in the print media, Walsh continued his crusade on the Pat Kenny Show and on local radio around the country. He focussed his attention on unmarried lone parents, young ones getting income, housing and other supports from the taxpayer to the tune of €23,000 per annum. OPEN responded with the facts: births to teenagers have remained at around the 3,000 per year mark for 30 years; 2.3 per cent of lone parents in receipt of social welfare are aged under 20 years; most lone mothers have been married; one-parent families are three and half times more likely to live in poverty than anyone else in Ireland and so on. Walsh was not for moving.

The Sunday Independent supported Walsh on 6 February with a piece in which, among other things, referred to OPEN and Terry Prone (above) as Village-reading liberals. O'Hanlon also had a swipe at Mary Lou McDonald who had issued a press release critical of Walsh's comments mid-week.

Then of course Tuesday of this week arrived and Kevin Myers decided to support Ed Walsh (who, to be fair immediately distanced himself from Myers.)

Myers repeated the figures used by Ed Walsh but then went a lot further in characterising lone mothers as young, lazy and welfare-addicted.

At a women's event in Donegal, ironically a meeting on the social welfare system, the article was passed around the room and little groups gathered, debating whether this was in fact at last the time to react strongly to Myers. His previous provocations on violence against women and on decriminalising prostitution have raised many heckles in the women's movement and beyond, but there has almost always been a "don't respond" strategy: why give oxygen to his views, has been the rationale. On this occasion, the court of public opinion, the media, the women's movement and the broader community and voluntary sector recoiled in horror, and responded with a disparate but somehow unified response. The Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, described these words as "hate words", an expression echoed on the airwaves throughout the day.

In Thursday's Irish Times, the editorial side of the house was clearly and unequivocally apologetic. Kitty Holland contributed a courageously moving column on her personal experiences. Mary Raftery once again reminded readers of our past, evoking images of an Ireland of not that long ago and warning of the innate dangers of singling out any group in society. Kevin Myers's column was interesting. He was extremely and sincerely apologetic – about his use of language and the genuine offence it caused.

However he then went on to repeat all of the stereotypical and stigmatising misinformation he used in Tuesday's article: "large numbers of young women drawn into the perils of early and unmarried motherhood by the allure of the apparent protection afforded to them…"; "children raised without the disciplines of wage and work"; "the mass experiment in fatherless families… way stations to male delinquency, gang membership and criminality".

So, Myers withdrew the highly offensive abuse of children and parents but still paints the same ignorant and inaccurate picture. As the debate focussed on the abuse, addressing the other issues was ignored.

As we have said for the past fortnight, OPEN's 80 member groups around the country want a debate in the media.

Let's have opposing, passionate and dispassionate views. Let's ask questions about children, about the social welfare system and the role of fathers and not interminably focus on mothers. Lets start by recognising the diversity of one-parent families – we are women, men, separated, divorced, single, deserted, widowed, or with institutionalised partners; we are all ages; some of us are disabled; some of us are deeply religious; some of us work; some of us would love to; some of us are gay, lesbian or bi-sexual; most of us have been deeply disappointed or hurt by our life experiences.

One thing unites us, just like most other parents, we try to do the very best for our children.

Francis Byrne is director of One Parent Exchange and Network (OPEN)