Dáil debates

Tuesday, 19 February 2013

Magdalen Laundries Report: Statements

 

8:35 pm

Photo of John HalliganJohn Halligan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I grew up on a street on which there was a Magdalen laundry, the Waterford Institution, which housed 120 women at any time. I lived across the road from it when I was a child. When I was growing up there was an average of 60 women in the Waterford Institution at any time. Although I was aware as a child that a laundry operated from the building, I had no idea that the building was the State's answer to many social problems that these women now face today. Given the State's failure to make provision to address these problems, the religious order had obtained an entirely unpaid and captive workforce for its commercial laundry enterprise.

Survivors groups have been telling for years what the McAleese report confirmed, that incarceration in the Magdalen laundries was similar to being sent to prison. The State's failure to monitor the conditions in the laundries amounts to a grave and systematic violation of the girls' and women's human rights. Surely a serious crime was committed in effectively kidnapping these women, forcing them to work for low pay and depriving them of all legal constitutional human rights. For this, we should call for accountability. The only way I see this happening is if the Government orders a full judicial review and criminal investigation into the Magdalen scandal in order that charges can be brought against all those responsible for this cover up. If we believe they were kidnapped and held against their will, we have a responsibility under international law and our own law to make sure that the people who did that are held responsible.

I will not accept the contention that these were very different times, something that has been said on a number of occasions. The fact of the matter is that we had legislation in place that should have protected these women but it was not applied.

We need to ask a few questions. Why did the State's factory inspectors who visited these commercial Magdalen laundries - they visited them in Waterford - not properly question why no rights were being given to these girls and women, some of whom were in their seventies and eighties and were working 12 hours a day, six days a week with no holiday entitlements? Why did school inspectors not investigate the fact that the State was not living up to its constitutional duty to educate the children in the Magdalen laundries? No checks were done on that. Why were gardaí used in an illegal manner to forcibly return escapees who were being held against their will? Why was the State's judicial system allowed to routinely refer women to the laundries, despite there being no legal basis supporting the court's use of these institutions to confine the women?

I do not want to go into how women have been let down by the country; all of that has been said, and I am grateful it was said. I thought the Taoiseach was excellent in his remarks today. The McAleese report states that 42 women died in the Waterford laundry between the establishment of the State in 1922 and 1982, with at least nine of these deaths never even being registered. It is crucial that this part of Ireland's history is not forgotten and that the State shows a commitment to remember these chapters of the nation's history.

I want to address my final remarks to the church which has been vociferous in telling politicians about children's and women's rights. Within the church was an organisation that participated in a cruel and premeditated exploitation of women. How women and children have been treated in the State by the church is reprehensible. The best thing the church could do at this stage is to shut up on women's rights, women's issues and children's issues. It is not capable of lecturing or giving advice with the history of child abuse in Ireland. Now we have the Magdalen laundries. We have to at all stages face down those, be it the church, the State or any political group, organisation or individual, who would precipitate cruelty on anyone else. For too long in Irish society the church has hidden behind some sort of Shangri-La that it does not know what it is or how it is but if its members pray and say they are sorry, everything will be forgiven. We should not forgive them because they have destroyed human lives. No matter what way we look at it they have destroyed human lives from the time these people were children until they reached adulthood and later on.

We are at nothing here if we do not have a judicial inquiry and deal with the people who perpetrated these awful crimes against women.

If, in 2013, we heard this was going on in a third world country or an African country, our Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade would be calling for what I am calling for now. We should do this. We will have achieved nothing if we do not bring those who were responsible for the cruelty inflicted on these women and children to justice.

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