Eamonn Maloney (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

This is another part of the dark past of our country. It seems to be running in a cycle, whether it is child abuse or this horrific legacy issue of these institutions and how they were governed. I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, and commend her on for pushing this matter for many years, long before I entered the House. Fair play to her as it is one of those issues for which there are no votes. We have got this far as we always wanted an inquiry that would be published.

Fianna Fáil has done itself a disservice by prostituting the issue this evening to get some gain out of wrong-footing the Government. There are occasions when one does not do that and this is one of them. Given the history of this issue and what happened over the past 80 years, Fianna Fáil had ample opportunity to do something about it but it turned its back on the Magdalen survivors. For a party that, with the exception of the Communist Party in China, has been in power longer than any other political party, it could easily have resolved the matter. If it had been done a generation ago, this report would not comprise 1,000 pages but 10,000 pages because most of the survivors would have been still alive.

In the late 1970s I found myself living in London. Before then I had never heard of the Magdalen laundries. However, I heard stories from women and their daughters in Irish pubs about these laundries and I could not understand why they were so dark. People who had been in these laundries ran out of this country quick enough such was their experience of them. I do not blame them for that. Cases such as these were repeated in other cities such as Birmingham and Manchester.

These institutions were referred to as laundries but after reading this report one cannot describe them as such. They would more accurately be described as prisons because the women were not paid nor could they leave of their own will - the criteria of prison conditions. This was a form of female slavery in this Republic. There is also cruelty detailed in the report which is not as sharp as that described to me by those I met across the water. It is a myth for anyone to suggest the Catholic Church, which managed these institutions in collaboration with the State, did not make money from their operation. It made lots of money, a point those who went across the water 30 years ago would say as some of them had worked in the laundries’ accounts sections. The laundries made money, which we must redress. This report contains the truth but there is more to come. This generation of politicians must put its hand, recognise the women are telling the truth and show them the due respect by bringing this matter to a conclusion.

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