Magdalene Group Urges Action

By Patsy Mcgarry
Irish Times
May 24, 2012

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0524/breaking44.html

Mary Lou McDonald, who chaired the meeting, pointed out that while the Magdalene issue

Dissatisfaction with the pace of Government action when dealing with the issue of Magdalene Laundries was forcefully expressed by members of the Justice for Magdalene’s (JFM) group at Leinster House this afternoon.

Addressing a cross-party group of TDs and Senators, Katherine O'Donnell who is the head of Women's Studies at UCD recalled Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s “great speech about the Vatican” in the Dail but pointed out that it was still the case that some women survivors of the laundries “still live in Magdalene Ireland.”

She knew three such women who were dying of cancer. They “needed an apology (from the State) urgently as well as redress and restorative justice now,” she said.

In his speech to the Dail on July 20th last year the Taoiseach noted that “this is not Rome. Nor is it industrial-school or Magdalene Ireland, where the swish of a soutane smothered conscience and humanity and the swing of a thurible ruled the Irish-Catholic world. This is the ‘Republic’ of Ireland 2011.”

Lawyer Maeve O’Rourke said that next Monday JFM was planning to meet Felice Gaer, vice President of the United Nations Committee on Torture (UNCAT), in Dublin.

They would advise her that, despite UNCAT recommendations last year where the Magdalene Laundries were concerned, there had still been no apology to survivors of the Laundries, no redress and no independent investigation into the full facts of abuse in the Laundries.

Ms O’Rourke, who presented the JFM case to UNCAT in Geneva last year which led to the Committee making those recommendations, acknowledged that the Government had set up the inter-departmental committee under the chairmanship of Senator Martin McAleese to inquire into the Laundries.

But, she said, “it is still our case that the women are still no closer to redress or an apology – and that they cannot afford to wait any longer.”

She also said JFM reserved the right “to call for an investigation with statutory powers, which would augment the voluntary nature of Senator McAleese’s committee with powers to compel evidence in an open and transparent manner.”

Prof Jim Smith of Boston College presented a detailed 27-page report to the TDs and Senators which established “overwhelming evidence of State interaction” with the 10 Magdalene Laundries in the Republic.

The document was prepared with the assistance of senior counsel Raymond Hill. Prof Smith said JFM had “engaged with Senator Martin McAleese and the interdepartmental committee” and that this had been “a very positive experience.” All information accumulated by JFM had been handed over to that committee, hr said.

He recalled previous meetings with TDs and Senators at Leinster House and how, at the very first such meeting President Higgins, then a TD, had encouraged JFM to look at the situation of Magdalene survivors from a human rights perspective. That was why JFM had gone to UNCAT, Prof Smith said.

He pointed out that the Ryan Commission, and testimonies by survivors themselves had established that women’s labour in the Laundries had been “forced and wholly unpaid, working conditions were harsh and the women were completely deprived of their liberty and suffered both physical and emotional abuse.”

He illustrated how women in the Laundries had been placed there by the courts, with some transferred from industrial schools or mother and baby homes. He illustrated instances where the gardai returned women to the Laundries, how State agencies used their laundry services, how the State paid capitation grants to religious congregations which ran the Laundries.

He further showed how there was a complete failure on the part of the State to supervise the laundries even to require death certificates for the women when they died in the laundries.

Mary Lou McDonald, who chaired the meeting, pointed out that while the Magdalene issue “is hugely political, it is not party political.” She congratulated JFM for their “fantastic work:” in the area.