David Norris (Independent)

Last week, I raised two related issues. One was about Bethany Home and the fact that the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin should be included in the redress scheme. This was met with a rather strange silence. The other issue was about Magdalene laundries. I would like to pursue these issues, because there have been developments.

First, on behalf of the Bethany Home survivors, Mr. Leinster has stated that he is putting a three month time limit to await positive action from the Government, after which he will seek a judicial review. Second, there was a very interesting article written by Mary Raftery in The Irish Times. Both she and The Irish Times should be commended for the continuing interest in this area. The article contains material that would lead us to have such a debate. She suggests we need to look in an imaginative way at other areas, rather than the direct areas. For example, State bodies such as the Army removed contracts from commercial companies in the early 1940s and gave them to the Magdalene laundries on the basis of cost. This had the effect of closing at least one laundry and placing a considerable number of people on the unemployment register. In 1941, former Minister Oscar Traynor mislead the Dáil - possibly unintentionally - when he said that the people in the Magdalene laundries were covered by the fair wages clause in their contracts. They had no contracts and, in fact, they were unpaid. Many of them were involuntarily contained in those institutions.

The operation of the Factories Act 1955 needs to be scrutinised. The health and safety conditions and requirements contained therein were never met by the Magdalene laundries. There was a legal requirement on the State to inspect them under the Factories Act, but the State never did so. That is very regrettable. It has been stated in both Houses that there was no requirement on the State, but section 84 of the Act clearly includes laundries.

In May 1955, former Minister for Industry and Commerce, William Norton of the Labour Party, said: "Once you wash clothes in the institution, not for the institution, then that is a factory. In other words, you have a right to wash clothes for the institution, but if you start to wash other people's clothes, it is a factory for the purposes of section 84." Nothing could be clearer. We really need to do justice to both these groups and the best way to help is through a full debate in Seanad Éireann. I call on the Leader to permit such a debate.