Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

When the Deputy sees the interim report which is being published this afternoon she will note that Senator McAleese describes in great detail the progress that has been made. All of the religious congregations have co-operated with him to the extent that all of their records going back over 90 years have been made available to him and to his interdepartmental group. Substantial work is ongoing within each Department which can provide any information from its files of any description with regard to the State's contact with the Magdalene laundries going back to 1922. All this information is being compiled. This is very important work because the background, the story of the events that occurred over those years, is perhaps a little more complex when it is put in the context of the different eras and decades, than has been portrayed to date.

I very much welcome the constructive progress that has been made. The Government will not pre-empt the work of Senator McAleese's group in dealing with the religious orders, the Justice for Magdalenes group and the other groups. When that work is complete, other issues will then be addressed. In the meantime a question does not arise and I ask the Deputy to withdraw the suggestion that anyone is waiting for people to die.

This is the first Government to make specific decisions to address the very genuine worries and concerns that have been expressed by those who lived in the Magdalene laundries. We have put in place a process in which we are also moving forward on other fronts. The possibility of a restorative justice scheme operating is under active consideration between the religious congregations and the former residents. We are looking at the possibility of a repository in which all the records of the laundries are retained. In the meantime, significant progress has been made in a very short period of time by Senator McAleese's group.

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