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

The Taoiseach has wrongly asserted here this morning that the McAleese report is the first occasion on which we had documented evidence of the abuses in the Magdalen laundries. He will be aware that the Ryan report detailed forced unpaid labour, denial of liberty to women and significant physical and emotional abuse. In the same year that the Ryan report was published, the Taoiseach's colleague, Deputy Alan Shatter, now the Minister for Justice and Equality, was absolutely steadfast in his view, a correct view, that there was irrefutable evidence of State complicity in the Magdalen laundries. The report released yesterday confirms yet again what many of us in this Chamber have known for a very long time, that the State was complicit in the detention of women, in the routes of entry to these laundries, in the State inspection of these laundries and in direct State funding.

It was a very big disappointment that the Taoiseach failed yesterday to apologise on behalf of the State to those women for what they have endured.

I had hoped that overnight the Taoiseach would have had time to reflect. I hope he listened to the reaction of the women of the Magdalen laundries to his failure to apologise. I hope he has listened very carefully to their accounts, stories and experiences; how they tell that they were held against their will; how they suffered physical, verbal and emotional abuse; and how they were forced to work for nothing, which is slave labour. I believe these women and I believe their account. Does the Taoiseach believe them? If he does, why then will he not offer a full and sincere apology on behalf of the State? Why will he not offer an apology for the indignity that these women suffered in these laundries, an indignity in which we know, definitively, the State was complicit in. Former Senator McAleese's report simply confirms that fact. Many of these women are elderly and many of them do not enjoy good health. They have waited and they have waited and yesterday was the day for the Taoiseach, on behalf of the State and its citizens, to say clearly to them: "You were wronged. We recognise that you were wronged." When will the Taoiseach's apology be forthcoming and why not this morning?

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