IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

IT HAS been instructive in recent days to hear Justice Minister Alan Shatter lay down the gauntlet to the religious orders who ran the Magdalene Laundries.

Mr Shatter spoke of how the Government, the public, and the survivors expect that the Mercy Sisters, the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, the Sisters of Charity, and the Good Shepherd Sisters should cough up and contribute towards the compensation scheme.

It was remarkably tough talking from a Government that lauded the McAleese report and which Taoiseach Enda Kenny himself praised as a “document of truth”.

The report, published last February, gave a remarkably benign account of the laundry system and presented a picture wildly at odds with the horror stories of the Magdalene Laundries which we have read for decades.

Instead, Martin McAleese’s report found that “the ill treatment, physical…