Maureen O'Sullivan (Dublin Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

First, I acknowledge the work of Sinn Féin and Deputy McDonald, in particular, in bringing this debate to the Dáil and their efforts to secure cross-party and Independent support for this motion. The ladies deserve a dignified debate in this House. They were deprived of dignity in the laundries and some of them were deprived of it after they left. I also wish to acknowledge the work of the committee chaired by Senator McAleese and the work of Ms Nuala Ní Mhuircheartaigh, as well as the co-operation they received from various Departments and the religious orders. It is a tribute to the skills of the committee and Senator McAleese that all of that support and encouragement was received. However, I am disappointed by the delay in the completion of the report. Even more disappointing is the fact the report will not make any recommendations, which could result in further delays. That is no longer acceptable.

Above all, I wish to acknowledge the work of the Justice for Magdalenes group. Without them this is an episode in our history that people would have been delighted just to forget about and brush under the carpet. Were it not for their work, the issue would not be receiving the attention it is now getting. We have learned of the systematic abuse of people in industrial schools, the Magdalene laundries, the Bethany Home and in various sports organisations. These are very dark moments in our history but they do not belong to the past. They are still very much in the present because those people have to live with the scars of that abuse and the scars do not go away.

The ladies are asking for an apology and redress. Many of the women are living in very difficult circumstances. They are generally quite elderly so time is of the essence. It is important that more women do not die without an apology and redress. When I put a priority question to the Minister, he was quite horrified at my suggestion that delaying tactics were being employed but people cannot be blamed for thinking that.

The response to most of the questions posed by Members on this issue is that the Department wants to establish the facts fully. We know what Justice for Magdalenes has submitted regarding State involvement with the Magdalene laundries. Their submission document contained 12 files of supporting material and two files of survivor testimony, totalling 795 pages. They also submitted over 3,700 pages of archival and logistical documentation. These documents outlined what happened to these young girls and women. They were deprived of their liberty, physically and sexually abused, forced into slave labour, deprived of medical treatment, neglected and humiliated. They endured enormous fear, as well as the loss of their identity. One relative who visited a laundry described it as a "Gulag-style incarceration facility".

There is clear evidence that the State's judicial system routinely referred people to the Magdalene laundries. There was evidence of transfer from the industrial schools and from the mother and baby homes, which received State and local government funding. An aspect of this that I find particularly horrific is the number of young people who were put into the laundries by their families and simply left there, not to mention the State's failure to supervise this.

The State apologised to the survivors of the industrial schools in May 1999, before carrying out the relevant inquiry and before establishing the redress scheme. A further apology was issued in 2009. In that context, I ask, as an interim measure, for a gesture of goodwill and an acknowledgement of what went on, that the apology could come sooner rather than later. I discovered in the Justice for Magdalene's documentation that the first parliamentary question on the matter was asked in 1938.

In conclusion, this time last year I went to a play at the Dublin Fringe Festival called "Laundry" by Louise Lowe, whose family is from the north inner city. The play was based in the convent that was used as a Magdalene laundry in Sean McDermott Street and was like a virtual reality tour through the various rooms. I was totally traumatised by the experience, even though I was only there for about an hour and a half. It was a very visual representation of what those women went through. During the play, one of the characters said "Will you tell somebody?" and I reacted, as an audience member, and said "Who will I tell?". Thinking about it afterwards I wondered who I would have told because nobody wanted to listen. Nobody in authority wanted to know what was going on. Finally, enough is enough for those ladies.

See this speech in context