Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Last week's report by former-Senator McAleese laid bare a harrowing picture of humiliation and exploitation suffered by women and girls who were sent to a network of Irish workhouses. It characterised those institutions as lonely and frightening places. Over a 70 year period, at least 10,000 women were housed in the laundries. The youngest was aged nine years and the oldest 89 years. Over recent years, we have seen and heard of a terrible catalogue of abuse, hurt and betrayal of trust within our institutions. Society continues to reap the consequences of being in the grip of organised institutional abuse whether it was by the church, the State or our schools.

Since the 1990s, Ireland has undergone a painful catharsis regarding widespread child sexual and physical abuse in what were once revered and feared institutions of church and State. We have seen the publication of 14 high powered and damaging reports into the abuse and exploitation of children in church-run orphanages, industrial schools and, unfortunately, in our parishes. The late Mary Raftery's documentaries "States of Fear, Cardinal Sins" and "Behind the Walls" showed time and again the immense bravery it took to challenge the consensus and expose previously untouchable figures in society. She showed that change could be effected and the lid lifted on Ireland's institutions where for a long time being mentally ill or simply an inconvenience could have had one locked away for life. She reported that this nation used to lock up more of its own people in those institutions than any other country including the old Soviet Union. That is some legacy.

I hope the report enables us finally to draw a line in the sand and to recognise that saying or doing nothing or engaging in a downright cover-up is as bad as the perpetrators' abuse. If there is a common theme running through the reports, it is that institutions put their own interests before those of our children or our women. The situation we have had to deal with in Ireland in terms of institutional abuse in industrial schools and orphanages is uncannily similar to what is emerging in the United Kingdom through the Jimmy Saville inquiry.

I am very proud to be part of a Government which last year introduced the heads of the Children First Bill which makes it a legal obligation to report suspected abuse of children to our authorities. In the past, politicians had a kind of obsession with the seal of confession, and the focus on the Catholic Church meant a failure to prioritise every case where children and violence were concerned.

I pay a huge tribute to those women who have come forward to the various inquiries, which must have been at a terrible personal cost. In his findings, Dr. McAleese and his co-authors said they hoped that the report would bring healing and peace of mind to all concerned, most especially the women whose lived experience of the Magdalen laundries had had a profound and enduring negative effect on their lives. I share that hope.

The girls who were sent to the Magdalen laundries had committed no crime, but they could easily have been taken by the police and locked away in prisons funded by the State.

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