IRELAND
The God Squad
Mary Lou McDonald TD
Residential Institutions Statutory Fund Bill 2012
Tues, 8 May 2012
It is important to say at the outset that the State and the Government continue to fail the women and children of the Magdalene Laundries and Bethany Home. It is to the great shame of the Fine Gael Party and the Labour Party that they have done nothing to right the wrong perpetrated against these women and children despite having been so critical of the previous Government’s inaction when in opposition.
The current Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, said in 2010 that former residents of the Magdalene Laundries and Bethany Home must be included in the redress scheme. She went on to criticise the then Minister for Education and Skills for failing to allow these institutions to be included in the list of qualifying institutions for redress. She went on to say that for her, and I quote, it “was becoming clearer and clearer that these institutions were, to all intents and purposes places of detention, and that as such, “residents” were effectively sentenced by servants of the state, to periods of confinement therein”. The Labour Party Minister of State, when in opposition at the time, concluded her outrage with a demand for Government to do the right thing. She was correct to do so.
If we go further back to 2005, the Minister’s party colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Jan O’Sulliven, rightly described the scandal surrounding Bethany Home as a matter of national importance. In the same year the Minister of State, Deputy Joe Costello, called on the Government to include Bethany Home in the redress scheme. All three of those Labour Party Deputies are now Ministers of State – they are part and parcel of this Government. During their years on the opposition benches they all shouted loudly against the decision by the Fianna Fáil led Government to exclude the Magdalene Laundries and Bethany Home from the redress scheme. They were right to do so, but I have to ask where are they today? What is the point of being in Government if one does not act against the very injustices that so exercised one when in opposition?
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