Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Tá an rúin seo an tábhachtach ar fad le haghaidh an daonra, go háirithe mná sa sochaí. I am very grateful to have the opportunity to discuss this incredibly important issue and to speak on behalf of a group of very brave and strong people, those who survived what I have little doubt is the worst injustice ever visited on Irish people by other Irish people. The story of the Magdalene laundries is a kind of horrific catalogue of grinding injustice and every new piece of information still shocks us, despite all that has been uncovered to date. There is no ability to turn away.

As legislators and so-called leaders, we will be nothing but failures, no matter what we achieve otherwise, if we do not do all we can to bring a just and honest close to this most shameful and sad chapter in Irish life. This is a chapter in which only those who suffered at the hands of the laundries can really be called innocent. The description of "laundry" or "institution", should possibly be banned from use in the discussion these places. We should call them what they were, prisons. They were not prisons for criminals but for innocent women and children.

Moreover, their only crime was their gender, for which they were subjected to the hatred, fear and disrespect of both church and State. It would be convenient for us to shift the blame entirely onto the church and the religious orders which ran the laundries. The bottom line, however, is that the State which funded these institutions, directly and indirectly, must also bear the guilt. Silence, apathy and collaboration are not the deeds of the innocent. The reality is that the State allowed the Catholic Church free rein for many years. While there were decent and genuine people among the clergy, it is an undeniable fact that the church in this country was riddled with individuals who lacked the most basic humanity and saw fit to treat women and children, in particular, as nothing more than property - useful in their way but ultimately deserving of hatred, violence and abuse.

Despite being designated as factories where clothes were washed for external use, the State failed utterly in its obligations to inspect the laundries. The Factories Act 1955 stipulated that all operations covered by the Act were required to follow health and safety regulations and abide by employment law, as well as being subject to State inspection to ensure conditions were in order. None of these requirements was upheld because the Magdalene prisons were above the law. None of the ten laundries operating in the State was inspected, despite very high inspection rates for other factories. It is difficult to accept that there was no concerted decision not to inspect the laundries knowing, as we do, what would have been found and the trouble it would have caused. In response to a recent parliamentary question as to why the institutions had not been inspected, the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Richard Bruton, offered the quip that entitlement and requirement were not the same. That is not good enough.

What will the Government do for the people who suffered at the hands of the State in this manner? In 2010 a former Minister for Education and then Deputy, Michael Woods, tipped his hat to the victims in the debate on the establishment of the residential institutions redress scheme but offered nothing by way of a genuine response to their just campaign for redress. That campaign for justice continues today. A committee has been set up to establish the extent of State involvement, by now a well established fact. I wish the committee well in its work, but it will not offer any resolution. The bottom line is that the State failed utterly in its duty of care to these women and girls. Even worse, it co-operated in their prosecution. These citizens were kidnapped, abused, beaten and enslaved and told it was just punishment for their wrongdoing.

I take the opportunity to mention the victims and survivors of Bethany Home. Between 1922 and 1949, more than 220 children died in the care of that institution, 219 of whom were buried in unmarked graves in Mount Jerome cemetery. Although often forgotten, they are equally deserving of justice. Bethany Home was essentially the Magdalene laundry for Protestant women. Its survivors are entitled to justice and truth and must also receive a State apology and redress.

Throughout the world people remember and memorialise victims of injustice. Monuments are built and plaques and statues erected in order to ensure they are never forgotten and to remind subsequent generations that the crimes visited on the people concerned must never be allowed to recur. The time for prevarication is past. The State must apologise to the victims of the Magdalene laundries and state unequivocally that what happened will never happen again. The nation must act with a humanity and care towards the victims that will make the horrors of the laundries seem even worse by comparison. We must give immediate redress and support to the survivors of these crimes. Táimid ag lorg tacaíocht an Tí le haghaidh an rún seo ar Ghnó Comhaltaí Príobháideacha.

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