Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

The issue of women who were committed to Magdalene laundries is one of the last unresolved issues of the hidden Ireland of institutions, religious orders and the State so eloquently set out in the Ryan report and a whole series of articles, books, films, memoirs and television programmes.

Just before Christmas last year, the Justice for Magdalene group met senior officials in the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform. At that meeting, Mr. James Martin, an assistant secretary at the Department, stated that after the passage of the Criminal Justice Act 1960, the State routinely placed women on remand in the Magdalene institutions and paid a capitation grant for each woman so referred. I welcome the admission by the Department that women were routinely referred to various Magdalene asylums via the Irish court system in an arrangement entered into by members of the Judiciary and the four religious congregations operating Magdalene laundries in the State. Women were also placed in Magdalene laundries "on probation" by the Irish court system, in some cases for periods of up to three years.

There is cross-party agreement among many of Members of the Dáil in support of demand by the Justice for Magdalene group that records relating to all such women and to these institutions should be released. In addition, it now seems appropriate that the Minister for Education and Science should withdraw the assertion he made on 4 September 2009 that "the State did not refer individuals to Magdalene laundries; nor was it complicit in referring individuals to them".

The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform has come clean and the Department of Education and Science should do the same. The Minister for Education and Science must come before the House and withdraw these references, as well as his previous references to women in Magdalene laundries being some form of employee in routine employment within the laundries. There is a need to seek to address the wrong that was done to these women. They need a forum in which to tell their story, recover their history and be acknowledged by the State. Many of the survivors, who are not numerous, now are elderly, poor and living in greatly reduced circumstances in Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States.

It is welcome that the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform has entered into a serious dialogue with the representatives of these women. Last July, on foot of the publication of the Ryan report, the Labour Party introduced to the Dáil a Bill prepared by my colleague, Deputy Quinn, which sought to address some of the proposals in the all-party resolution which followed on from the Ryan report. This included a proposal to extend for the purposes of redress, the age of majority to the then age of majority of 21. The Labour Party believes this would deal with a significant number of cases.

For people under 40, there is almost no memory or familiarity with the laundries or the other institutions in which women were incarcerated, in many cases because they were having a child on their own or because they otherwise had come to the attention of the courts. Incarceration in such institutions was seen by the court system and a doctrinaire Catholic State as a substitute for female imprisonment. As I noted previously regarding the school I attended, a laundry was attached to the Sisters of Charity convent, Stanhope Street, that I believe continued until the end of the 1960s. The same also is true in other parts of the country.

I believe the public in Ireland and a wide body of cross-party opinion in this House, strongly supports justice and restitution for the women who were incarcerated and who worked like slaves in these laundries. It is up to the Minister for Education and Science to do this because in the Ryan report and many of the other reports, the Department of Education and Science had a pivotal role in committing people to institutions. Much has been learned from the Ryan and Murphy reports and a series of small steps remain to be taken in respect of the legacy of the Magdalen laundries. I believe the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform has begun on the right road and the challenge is for the Minister for Education and Science to come before this House and do the same by remedying this historic wrong.

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