Dáil debates

Tuesday, 19 February 2013

Magdalen Laundries Report: Statements

 

7:35 pm

Photo of Richard Boyd BarrettRichard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

In many ways I feel out of place speaking on this subject. I feel that the women themselves should have the first chance to respond to what the Taoiseach has said today on behalf of the State. Their reaction is the most important thing. Things are as they are, however. Given that, I will try to do justice to the issues as I see them following the Taoiseach's statement.

As the Taoiseach and others have stated, the history of the Magdalen laundries is a dark and utterly shameful chapter in the history of the State. It is a history of 90 years in which more than 10,000 innocent women, who did nothing wrong, were imprisoned, enslaved, exploited, stigmatised, abused and denied their most basic human and civil rights. It is a history in which the church and religious institutions, which claimed to be the moral guardians of society, were the jailers, abusers and torturers of these women. These institutions were agents for the daily humiliation and incarceration of these women and were responsible for obscenities one would have thought would be unthinkable in a civilised society. The thought that in a society claiming to be civilised, there would be mass graves in which the number of bodies was not matched by the number of death certificates simply beggars belief in a modern civilised society. As I listened to some of the speakers at the vigil outside Leinster House, who described and mentioned the names of people who did not survive but who lived and died inside these institutions and who talked about how those women were in these institutions for 20, 30, 40 or 50 years, it simply beggars belief.

If, however, the church and religious institutions were the direct agents of such horrific treatment of these women, the State colluded every step of the way. It did so by sending thousands of women to these institutions, by inspecting these institutions but ignoring the plight and the treatment of the women inside them, by funding these institutions, by trading with and profiting from these institutions and by failing to uphold human and civil rights, not just as we understand them today but as were in place even then in international law. It did so by failing to ensure the right to education of these women and thus blighting their future possibilities. Moreover, the State was at the centre of facilitating a much wider architecture of oppression and abuse that included the Magdalen laundries, Bethany Home, the industrial schools and a more general culture of repression and control in which women, the less well-off, those who were different or who failed to conform to oppressive social and moral norms were the chief victims. It beggars belief that it has taken this long for these women to get the acknowledgement and apology they have so long deserved. It beggars belief that the last of these institutions closed down only in 1996 - this was only a few years ago when many Members of this House were involved in politics - and that it has taken until now for the women finally to get the apology they deserve. The fact they have got it is a tribute to these women. They are the leaders who have led where the State has failed, where politicians have failed and where we have all failed in public life.

In conclusion, if we apologise, as the Taoiseach rightly has done, that apology must now have meaning and substance. It appears as though there is not much to consider in this regard. The women have led where we have failed. They have indicated what they need for redress and compensation and we should simply give it to them in order that they no longer are obliged to wait and suffer in the way they have for far too long. If apologies are to have meaning, we must act immediately.

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