'Remaining beneath the radar'

near ‘the bottom of the heap’
while living healthily and sanely
is, I realise, a pretty rare achievement
in a European nation-state.  
One needs opportunity,
education and opened intelligence,
none of which were available
to those whose 'liberated'
'independent' homeland
left them knowingly in the lurch:
the poor girls enslaved
in their thousands, in Ireland,
by evil instruments
of the Catholic Church.