IRELAND
Irish Independent
Emer O’Kelly– 24 February 2013
‘Sacred heart o’ Jesus, take away our hearts o’ stone an’ give us hearts o’ flesh.” In 1924, Sean O’Casey put that passionate prayer into the mouth of Mrs Tancred, standing on the stairs of a Dublin tenement. Nobody listened then to his cry for the voiceless; we remained deaf for generations.
But last Tuesday a group of women sat in the visitors’ gallery of our national parliament, moved to tears and cheers as a Taoiseach who had listened broke down on the floor of the house. The women had spoken often of a “stigma”. The only stigma is that they had to wait until most of them were old before the moment came.
The women incarcerated in the Magdalene Laundries were there against their will. According to several of the women’s representatives, the report delivered by former Senator Martin McAleese fell short in many ways; one of the most glaring was to write of “self-referral”.
Was a destitute woman thrown on the street by her parents “willing” when her choice was between selling herself or a hell-hole of slave labour?
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