Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move:

That Dáil Éireann:

notes that this motion has been drawn up with a survivor centred ethos;

agrees with the State’s position, as articulated in Dáil Éireann in February 2002, that abuse occurred in the Magdalene Laundries, that the abuse was an appalling breach of trust and that

the victims of that abuse suffered and continue to suffer greatly;

acknowledges the hurt and hardship caused by the exclusion of survivors of the Magdalene Laundries from the Residential Institutions Redress Scheme;

acknowledges that the Magdalene survivor population is predominantly aging and elderly;

acknowledges that survivor testimony records that women were made to work without pay, were kept behind locked doors and returned by gardaí if they attempted to escape;

welcomes the establishment of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Magdalene Laundries to clarify any State interaction with the Magdalene Laundries and to produce a narrative detailing such interaction;

notes the Irish Human Rights Commission document entitled Assessment of the Human Rights Issues Arising in relation to the “Magdalene Laundries”;

notes the UN Committee Against Torture’s recommendations on the Magdalene Laundries, its insistence that the State ensure that survivors obtain redress and its grave concern at the failure by the State to institute prompt, independent and thorough investigations into the allegations of ill-treatment of the women;

further welcomes the public statement of June 2011 by four religious congregations which ran ten Magdalene Laundries expressing a willingness to bring greater clarity, understanding, healing and justice in the interests of all the women involved;

further acknowledges that there is growing evidence of the State:

— sending women and girls to the Magdalene Laundries;

— providing the religious orders with direct and indirect financial support; and

— failing to supervise the religious orders’ operation of the Magdalene Laundries;

considers most serious the allegations of forced labour in the Magdalene Laundries, noting the incarceration and use of women and children as workers without pay would constitute forced labour under the 1930 Forced Labour Convention of the International Labour Organisation, which Ireland ratified in 1931, and accepts that the rejection and prohibition of slavery is a peremptory norm of international law;

acknowledges the need for immediate and meaningful discussion on an apology and redress;

commits to providing immediate funding for, and implementation of, a helpline for the survivors of the Magdalene Laundries;

commits to supporting survivors in accessing pensions that reflect their years of work in the Magdalene Laundries; and

commits to an open and meaningful debate on the issue of an apology, redress and restorative justice measures once the Inter-Departmental Committee has reported.

Before dealing with the motion, I will take a moment to recognise the strength and bravery of the survivors of the Magdalene laundries. More than 30,000 women and girls were incarcerated in these institutions, endured brutal hardship and worked without pay. They have lived with the stigma attached to being confined in the laundries, a confinement that was not their fault. The State has failed these women at every turn. They are both victims and survivors. We applaud their courage in coming forward and telling their story, we stand alongside them in their fight for justice and we offer them our profound apology for the failure of the State to protect them. They did nothing wrong; they were innocent victims of a brutal, intolerant system overseen and enforced by the State and religious orders.

The motion has been written with a survivor centred ethos. Politics has failed the women in question so we have looked to them to tell us what they need and what must be delivered. By shirking its responsibilities the State has played for time, which the women in question do not have. We put the Government on notice that this issue and these women will not go away.

There has already been ample acknowledgement of the abuse that took place in the Magdalene laundries. In February 2010, the then Minister for Education and Science, while explaining his exclusion of the Magdalene women from the residential institutions redress scheme, stated he did not "wish to dismiss the fact that abuse of adults could and did occur in Magdalen Laundries or that the abuse was an appalling breach of trust or, indeed, that the victims of that abuse suffered and continue to suffer greatly." Survivors have documented in heartbreaking detail the violence they endured. They worked without pay, were kept behind locked doors and were returned by the Garda if they attempted to leave.

There is a wealth of evidence in the public domain which shows the State provided direct and indirect financial supports to the laundries. The Ryan report details the women’s forced, unpaid labour in the laundries and notes that their working conditions were harsh. The women were deprived of their liberty and forced to work without pay, which constitutes slavery as defined in international law. The women and girls also suffered both physical and emotional abuse.

The need for acknowledgement and redress has also been set out in the public domain. In November 2010, the Irish Human Rights Commission found that serious human rights issues arose in the laundries and called on the Government to establish immediately a statutory inquiry into their treatment and provide redress to the survivors, as appropriate. In June 2011, the United Nations Committee Against Torture recommended that the State institute prompt, independent and thorough investigations and, in appropriate cases, prosecutions in addition to affording redress, compensation and rehabilitation to the Magdalene women. The women are predominantly elderly and many of them are in ill health as a direct consequence of their incarceration in the laundries.

Also in June 2011, the four religious congregations which ran the institutions expressed a willingness to bring greater clarity, understanding, healing and justice in the interests of all the women involved. Despite this, the State continues to refute its collusion with the same religious orders in the incarceration and forced labour of the women for commercial gain. It does so despite the fact that its judicial system regularly referred women to the Magdalene laundries. The Justice for Magdalenes group has provided the State with evidence that women and girls found guilty of a crime were referred to the Magdalene laundries and other religious run institutions throughout the State in almost every year following independence until at least 1983. These committals were far worse than the equivalent prison sentence as the women were incarcerated for periods far exceeding their original sentences. In many cases, the crimes in question were as simple as the theft of an apple or a pen.

The stigma attached to incarcerations in the Magdalene laundries was horrendous. It is for this reason, perhaps above all other reasons, that an acknowledgement and a State apology are so urgently needed. In a Seanad debate in 1960, Senator Connolly O'Brien spoke of the lifelong stigma attaching to a girl sent to the laundries. She stated: "If I were asked to advise girl delinquents, no matter what offences they were charged with, whether to go to prison on remand, or to go to St. Mary Magdalen's Asylum on remand, I would advise them wholeheartedly to choose prison, because I think having a record of having been in prison as a juvenile delinquent would not be so detrimental to the after life of the girl as to have it legally recorded that she was an inmate of St. Mary Magdalen's Asylum." Justice for Magdalenes has also provided evidence dating back to the 1920s of a magistrate's comments that "in many instances offenders have expressed to me in Court a desire to go, in some cases they have begged to be sent, to prison rather than a home."

Women were held in the laundries pre-trial and sent to them after release from long sentences in prison. Orphaned, neglected or abandoned children and children who did not attend school were sent to industrial schools and their experiences have been well documented. Religious orders often transferred girls directly from these industrial schools into the laundries.

The Ryan report contains evidence of girls as young as 13 being transferred to a Magdalene laundry to work in order to compensate the religious order for their mothers' failure to pay the required payments for their keep in the industrial school.

The State's complicity with the Magdalene regime was underwritten in law. The Local Government (Temporary Provisions) Act 1923 provided a statutory basis for using the Galway Magdalene laundry to confine women seeking public assistance for a second or subsequent pregnancy outside of marriage. In 1928, the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and the Destitute Poor similarly recommended mandatory incarceration in the laundries for women applying for maternity assistance a second time. More recently, the 1970 Kennedy report into reformatory and industrial schools details the many reasons why girls and women were placed in the laundries. It noted the so-called voluntary arrangement for placement could be criticised on several fronts, questioned their legal validity and found that the girls admitted were not aware of their rights.

Those who sought to escape their imprisonment were returned by the Garda, regardless of the reason they had been confined in the laundries in the first instance. One survivor, telling of her efforts to escape, was asked on her capture by the Garda why had she had tried to escape. She replied it was because the nuns were cutting her hair and putting her in a hole all the time. The gardaí involved did nothing to protect her; they simply returned her to the very people who were abusing her. This is just one example of a vast catalogue of the State's failure to supervise the religious orders' operation of the Magdalene laundries.

Tonight's motion sets out clear support for the work of the interdepartmental committee established under the chairmanship of Senator Martin McAleese. I do not, however, accept that this committee should be used as a delaying tactic or as a rationale for withholding the apology, acknowledgement and supports that the Magdalene women are due. The facts of the brutality in the laundries have been established. The complicity of the State has been established. The McAleese committee is tasked with quantifying the extent of that collusion. It must be very clear that the facts of cruelty and State collusion stand established.

This Government, however, hides behind the interdepartmental committee. It is its last fig-leaf, its last excuse to stand still. It does this in the full knowledge that time is not on the side of the aging Magdalene women. The Government offers no apology and refuses even the meagre comfort of their pension entitlements. Those are the pension entitlements of incarcerated women and girl slaves.

The Government's amendment to this motion is dishonourable. It dishonours this democratic assembly. It belies the Government's priority of protecting the State above vindicating the women, the same State that failed thousands of women and girls by holding them in the laundries. This evening, by failing to support this motion, it tramples on their rights again.

Several years ago, it was a different matter. In 2009, Labour Party women called for a separate redress scheme for the Magdalene women. In 2010, Deputy Burton, who was to become the Minister for Social Protection, said she strongly supported justice and restitution for these women. Deputy Alan Shatter, now the Minister for Justice and Equality, said the State was directly complicit in the confinement of these women and children. Three current Ministers of State made the very same arguments in opposition yet the Magdalene survivors still cannot even access their pension entitlements. Where did it all go wrong?

I acknowledge the support for this motion by the Independents and Technical Group Members. I also welcome Fianna Fáil's support. I had asked the Government to support this motion because it is couched in language that simply reflects what happened. However, it has refused to do so and it has refused to give some comfort to the Magdalene women. Instead, it has chosen to completely ignore the word, spirit and intent of the motion. The Labour Party and the Fine Gael Party cannot even commit to providing the meagre supports the Magdalene women need now. These women and girls were stripped of their rights. They were the innocent victims of a barbaric system. The State colluded with religious orders to enslave them in laundries run for commercial gain. Abuse did take place and trust was breached. These facts have already been established.

I ask for Members on the Government benches to support this motion. It is one they can support in good conscience. The Magdalene women deserve the Government's support. They have suffered for a very long time. The very least they can expect at this juncture is a unified voice from the Dáil that says to them that we acknowledge and accept their story, we apologise, we will ensure the basic services they need in the here and now will be put in place and we commit to redress. Time is against us, the clock is ticking and justice cannot wait for ever.

See this speech in context