Marian Harkin (Sligo-Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Today, International Women’s Day, gives us a chance to reflect on women and their lives, on the contribution women make to our society and on the challenges many women face in trying to live independent and fulfilling lives. It gives us a chance to think of some of the inspirational women in our own lives and at national and global level who have inspired us and who have been change-makers, often at great cost to themselves. It gives us a chance to reflect on the women whose names we will never hear but who led quiet lives of desperation and fear, whose lives were ripped apart and neatly forced back together so they conformed, so they became acceptable. So many of those women paid such a high price for being themselves.

In that context, I raised an issue this morning with the Taoiseach about the urgent need to preserve all private and public records and information relating to residents of Magdalen laundries. These records are the life story of these women - women who were silenced, women who were incarcerated and women whose labour profited others. The last piece of legislation passed by the Stormont Assembly was an all-party Bill, the Preservation of Documents (Historical Institutions) Bill.

This Bill seeks to ensure records and all relevant documents relating to certain institutions are preserved and protected and that it would be a criminal offence to alter, destroy or dispose of any of them. This would be a really good International Women's Day if the Government were to take a similar approach and follow the good example of our counterparts in Northern Ireland. I hope we can rely on the support of both the Minister and the Minister of State on this issue.

I mentioned earlier that today is an opportunity for all of us to reflect and also to thank some of the women who have inspired us in our lives. Last Saturday, I attended the funeral of my former school principal, Sr. Donal Moran, in Carrick-on-Shannon. She was an inspirational teacher and a decent and good principal. She ensured her students were able to take many of the opportunities presented to us. I have always had great respect for her and for many of the fine Marist Sisters who taught me in Tobercurry. It may seem odd that in a three-minute contribution I am speaking so critically of many of those who ran the Magdalen laundries and whose grip on records and information must be loosened, while at the same recognising the valuable contribution of the Marist Sisters to my education and that of many of classmates. Both aspects of this are valid and both have their place in the stories we tell on International Women's Day.

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