Dominic Hannigan (Meath East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch and the Minister for Justice, Deputy Shatter, for their work in setting up this committee. I also thank Dr. McAleese and the committee for the hard work they did in producing this report. We need to make a special mention because it is difficult to get all groups involved to contribute to a final document. We know from previous reports like this on institutions how difficult it is to get co-operation from all sides. Dr. McAleese managed to do this and I thank him for his perseverance in that matter.

It is difficult to be involved in debates such as this because one feels great sorrow for the women who spent any time, however short, in the laundries. I am sorry also for the children who were sent to these institutions and for the years they lost to them. My words here have limited power so instead I want to use the words of somebody who was there. I will read a testimony from a survivor. I got the testimony from the Justice for Magdalenes group. Maisie K. survived a Sisters of Mercy laundry and had this memory:

I sat on the stairs at the end of the ironing room. There was another stairs. There was a packing room at the end of the ironing room that led to the Forster Street entrance where the public would come in for packages. And I had enough and I just wanted to get out and I could not understand it why the door would not just open up and let me out if it was only to go out and come back again. But she came down anyway and she was like a devil and she said "What are you doing here? Get back to work." And I said "I won't. I want to get out of here. Why can't you let me out? This is wrong." She was sneering at me and the next thing I knew she gave me a fist into the face and I went backwards on the steps and she said "Get out." So she pushed me out and I went back to the tables. She went off and said nothing. “You do not leave that table,” she said and went. The following day I was called into a room with two nuns and she was there with a scissors in her hand. I knew what it meant and I kicked up hell. They forced me on my knees and she cut my hair. She did not cut it to the bone but left me with nothing only bits sticking out here and there.

I believe Maisie as well as the testimonies I have read in the report and seen in the documentaries. It was not the women’s fault that they were there. As the Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, said earlier, there should be no stigma attached to anyone who spent time in these institutions. I believe we need an official State apology to every woman who was sent to the laundries. Anything less is not good enough. I have known the Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, a long time and I know her record on this matter. I also know the long-term record of Fianna Fáil. However, I know who I trust in this matter, and that the Minister of State will do the right thing.

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