Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

In 2010, speaking from the Opposition benches, I said the terrible ordeal of the women committed to the Magdalen laundries was one of the last unresolved issues of the hidden Ireland. I am glad to say the Government is now acting decisively to resolve the issue and that at long last what was hidden and covered up has been exposed and brought into the light. It has been revealed that the State had a significant role in sending women to the laundries, that for too long it overlooked the suffering and grief this caused and that it owed these brave and courageous women an apology. I say these women were brave and courageous not just because of the quiet fortitude with which they bore their plight in the laundries but also because of the unceasing efforts of the survivors who would not rest until justice was done, both for them and the women who did not live to hear the State say "Sorry."

I am particularly glad that the women of the laundry in Stanhope Street will be included in the Government's redress fund. I remember that laundry as it was attached to the school I attended. I remember visiting the women in the laundry on my First Holy Communion day with my mother who was very friendly with a number of the women there. I never forgot that visit, although I did not really understand the situation as I was only seven years old. I was terrified of the noise, the machines, the big calendars and washing tubs. I got to know some of the women through my mother. They were allowed out one night a week and a particular woman used to visit us for tea. She would arrive at about 6.30 p.m. but would have to leave by 8.30 p.m. to return because they could not stay out late. Some may believe this was what life was like then for peole in the middle to late 1950s, but the women in the laundries had their freedom removed and were incarcerated in them. However tough life was then, being without one's freedom was very difficult. If the women concerned had a tough time, they did not have parents to explain it to, nor did they have siblings or friends to talk to about it. One must be mindful of how hard, difficult and tragic the experiences of many of these women were, even if they were part of a society which was poor and very much ruled by an authoritarian church.

It is good that, as a state and a society, we are finally prepared to listen, talk and think about how and why this happened. Why, after the Famine, did society, the State, the church and the institutions rush to lock up and institutionalise people in various ways? Historians such as Diarmaid Ferriter and people like Bruce Arnold have written about this. Perhaps it was the product of Jansenism in the Irish church or of the Famine. Whatever the answer, it is an extraordinary feature of our society that so many ended up being sent away from their families and institutionalised in different ways.

It has been forgotten that there were many loud and clear signals or red flags. In 1970, over 40 years ago, District Justice Eileen Kennedy addressed the issue of how girls were admitted to convents and laundries. Her report stated it was a haphazard system, that its legal validity was doubtful and that the girls admitted in that irregular way, being unaware of their rights, could remain in the laundries for long periods and become, in the process, unfit for re-emergence into society. She used the words "irregular", "doubtful legal validity" and "unaware of their rights". It is difficult to know what more evidence the State needed this was wrong.

Decades later, the Ryan report captured some of the ordeals gone through by women in the various residential laundries. One of the women told how as a young girl she had been abused by her stepfather. Society then deemed the child, rather than the abuser, at fault and she was sent to a laundry. She told the Ryan commission that the nun had told her that it was best she did not talk about what had happened or her family would be disgraced. Some witnesses told how the regime at the laundries was like a prison regime, with locked doors and extremely hard working conditions. Others described physical abuse. Women could not laugh or talk in the laundries or they would be battered. One said her whole childhood was gone in that place. Witnesses spoke about the loss of freedom, the loneliness and the spirit-crushing desperation and distress. When we hear these stories and the talk of the hidden Ireland, we realise this is about more than just one institution or order or more than one set of circumstances or victims.

In the 1980s I was involved with Attic Press, a feminist publishing house. It published the autobiography of a remarkable woman, Hanna Greally, entitled, Bird's Nest Soup, which was republished by Cork University Press in recent years. This woman was wrongly incarcerated, although she came from quite a middle class and well-off family. She was incarcerated for the best part of 20 years in St. Loman's psychiatric hospital in Mullingar because of something she had done as a young adult of which her family disapproved. Following her mother's death, no relative was willing to claim her and as a result she could not be released, resulting in a two-decade ordeal for her which, remarkably, she survived. I met this extraordinary woman and it was extraordinary to talk to her and witness the strength of the human spirit.

Several other women have also told about their experiences, for example, in the Steve Humphries documentary "Sex in a Cold Climate". That documentary described how the women were called "penitents", their hair was cropped and they had to wear drab uniforms.

In the Victorian era a woman's hair was called her "crowning glory". Nowadays, we are used to women cutting their hair very short or shaving it all off. That is an individual or a fashion choice. In the era of the Magdalen laundries cutting a woman's hair was a way of dehumanising and punishing her. It was done in many other countries, as well as in Ireland. The "penitents" in these laundries worked for no pay; their labour was symbolic. It was thought they could purge their sin by washing dirty linen. However, they had committed no sins. The sin was putting them into these institutions in the first place.

I was privileged to know the late journalist Mary Raftery who fought long and hard for the Magdalen women. She described the exhumation of bodies at the convent at High Park in Drumcondra. She reported that a number of the bodies found had no identification.

Each of the congregations came out with an apology on the afternoon of the publication of Dr. McAleese's report. I hope they will step up to the plate by taking part in the scheme to provide redress and compensation for the women concerned. I know that their faith is personally important to many of the women, particularly those to whom the nuns were kind. The orders need to think about taking part in the redress scheme to compensate them. I hope they will step forward and do so. The Government is determined to do its part on behalf of the State and society at large and I hope the orders will respond in kind, as it would help the women concerned as they continue with their lives.

I have met Sally Mulready and some of the other women who have worked on this issue. I hope the arrangements and proposals made by Mr. Justice Quirke when he produces his report in a couple of months will be helpful and healing. When I was growing up in the Manor Street area of Dublin, the woman in question were always called "the ladies of the laundry". Most of them had lost one or both parents and were orphans. I hope this process will be helpful to them and healing for them, particularly as many of them are in the later decades of their lives. I hope it will help them to accept that Irish society has made a meaningful apology, in the form of last week's statement by the Taoiseach. I was delighted that he and the Tánaiste, the leader of the Labour Party, had an opportunity to meet many of them. Given that they had not previously had an opportunity to meet many of the women or know about this matter in detail, it was absolutely essential for them to hear their human stories personally. It is important that the Government's approach helps the women concerned as they make their journey through life.

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