Martin Ferris (Kerry North-West Limerick, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

One of the key issues to be addressed in regard to the Magdalene laundries is the role of the State, which encompasses not only its abdication of responsibility but also its role in covering up the mistreatment and injustice meted out to victims. All aspects of the State's role are set out in a comprehensive report prepared for the interdepartmental Oireachtas committee established to investigate the matter by the Justice for Magdalenes group. Among the disgraceful facts to emerge from that report is the revelation that Departments and public companies utilised the services of the laundries. In fact, Áras an Uachtaráin gave its custom to one of the institutions. It is startling to see that the report documents transactions from as recently as 1980 and 1981.

In its commercial dealing with the laundries the State was effectively utilising the services of indentured servants. In fact, one might use even stronger words to describe the status of the women and girls who worked there. There was also the wider issue of the State's failure to monitor what was going on in the laundries. As in the case of the industrial schools administered by religious orders, this amounted to an effective privatisation of punishment. Moreover, the women sent to the Magdalene laundries and placed under the charge of the nuns who ran them were not guilty of any crime under the law but merely of an offence against perceived social acceptability.

The Irish Human Rights Commission has accepted that the failure on the part of the State to supervise the operation of the laundries amounted to a grave and systematic violation of the victims' rights as provided for under the Constitution. The conditions under which they were made to work violated the European Convention on Human Rights, various United Nations conventions on human rights and the conventions laid down for conditions of employment by the International Labour Organisation. The manner in which these young women were admitted into and detained in custody also violated the provision in Article 40.4.1o of the Constitution that no citizen "shall be deprived of his personal liberty save in accordance with the law". It is not inconceivable that had a case been taken on this basis, the reference to "his" might have been used as an excuse for what amounted to the illegal incarceration as workers without rights of the Magdalene women.

In this context, it is remarkable that during the entire period of their operation, only one laundry - at Sean McDermott Street, which was designated under the Criminal Justice Act 1960 as a remand centre - was legally entitled to detain any person. The treatment endured by the inmates violated international prohibitions on forced labour and degrading treatment, even though the State had ratified the 1930 convention which prohibited the use of "forced or compulsory labour". Even apart from these larger human rights issues, the laundries were in clear violation of domestic law. For example, the provisions of the Factories Acts could and should have been applied and the institutions subjected to regular inspections. If they had been carried out honestly, such inspections would have found the laundries to be in clear violation of the legislation.

What makes the enforced slavery of the women concerned even worse is the fact that the laundries, far from being the charitable institutions they claimed to be, were, in reality, highly profitable businesses. The Justice for Magdalenes report includes the claim by a former manager of the Magdalene laundry in Limerick that it had made a profit of some IR£100,000 in 1976. Not only was this a huge sum of money in those days, it would not be considered a poor return by a local laundry today. This huge profit margin was made possible because the laundry workers were unpaid and without rights. One can conclude that in the course of their operation the Magdalene laundries must have made several millions in profits. In combination with the huge sums accrued by the religious orders in land deals, this makes it a moral imperative that survivors are duly compensated for their labour and loss of freedom and the degradation forced on many of them. Anything less would be an insult to their suffering.

Under the alleged care of these terrible institutions, young women were deprived of their civil rights and used as slaves for the profit and benefit of those who ran them. Another speaker referred last night to an unfortunate young woman who escaped from one of the laundries only to be brought back and brutalised. A relative of mine who tried to escape from an institution was likewise subjected to brutal treatment. There is only one acceptable outcome to all of this, namely, a public apology from the State for what was done to the women concerned.

Compensation must be paid to those who had to endure the loss of their freedom and the injustice of being used as slaves by the State and religious orders. Nothing else will suffice.

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