IRELAND
Irish Examiner

September 8, 2018

By Conall Ó Fátharta

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s department has said there are “no plans” to open to the public the McAleese Committee archive on the Magdalene laundries despite repeated calls from campaigners and survivors.

It comes just weeks after Mr Varadkar asked the Pope to use his “office and influence” to ensure “justice and truth and healing” was given to survivors of institutional abuse.

The archive, which contains data from the religious congregations that ran the laundries as well as copies of relevant official records across departments, State agencies, and bodies, has been with the Department of An Taoiseach since 2015.

The department has refused calls to open the archive to the public in the years since.

In a Freedom of Information refusal issued to the Justice For Magdalenes Research (JFMR) group in 2016, the department said it was holding the archive for…