Labour Spokesperson on Finance
Issued : Thursday 21 January, 2010
The issue of women who were committed to Magdalenes Laundries is one of the last unresolved issues of the hidden Ireland of institutions, religious orders and the State, so eloquently set out in the Ryan report and a whole series of articles, films and programmes.
Just before Christmas, the ‘Justice for Magdalene’ group met with senior officials in the Department of Justice. At that meeting, Mr. James Martin, Assistant Secretary, stated that after the passage of the Criminal Justice Act (1960), the Department of Justice referred women to the Magdalenes Laundries and paid a capitation grant for each woman so referred.
I welcome the admission by the Department of Justice that “women were routinely referred to various Magdalene Asylums via the Irish court system, in an arrangement entered into by members of the judiciary and the four religious congregations operating Magdalene Laundries in the State.”
“Women were also placed in Magdalene Laundries “On probation” by the Irish court system, in some cases for periods of up to 3 years.”
There is cross-party agreement among significant numbers in the Dáil to support the demand by the ‘Justice for Magdalene’ group and that the records relating to all such women, and to these institutions, should be released.
It would now also seem appropriate that the Minister for Education’s assertion, last September 4th, that “the state did not refer individuals to Magdalene Laundries, nor was it complicit in referring individuals to them” should be withdrawn.
The Minister for Education needs to come into the House and withdraw these references and also his previous references to women in Magdalene Laundries being some form of employee of the laundries.
There is a need to seek to address the wrong that was done to these women. They need a forum in which to tell their story and recover their history. Many of the survivors are now elderly, poor and living in greatly reduced circumstances in Ireland, the UK and the US.
I welcome the fact that the Department of Justice has entered into a serious dialogue with the representatives of these women. The Labour Party brought before the Dáil last July a Bill which sought to address some of the proposals in the all-party resolution which followed on from the Ryan report. This included a proposal to extend the enquiry’s remit to the then age of majority of 21. The Labour Party believes that this would help in a significant number of cases.
For people under 40, there is no memory and no familiarity with the Laundries and the other institutions in which women were incarcerated, in many cases because they were having a child on their own or because they had come to the attention of the courts. Incarceration in these institutions was seen by the court system as a substitute for female prisons.
I believe that the general public in Ireland, and a wide body of cross-party opinion in this house, strongly supports justice and restitution for the women who were incarcerated and who worked like slaves in these Laundries.
Magdalene women ‘not on remand for long’
By Claire O’Sullivan
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Irish Examiner
1932THE Department of Justice has denied that women sent to Magdalene Laundries by the courts, on remand or on probation, were regularly kept at the institutions for protracted periods.
In meetings before Christmas with the Justice for the Magdalenes (JFM) group, department officials confirmed that after the publication of the 1960 Criminal Justice Bill, the department placed women "on remand" to the Sean McDermott Street Magdalene Laundry and Our Lady’s Home, Henrietta Street in Dublin.
This admission caused embarrassment for Education Minister Batt O’Keeffe, who had refused the Magdalene survivors any redress last September, arguing the State "did not refer individuals nor was it complicit in referring individuals to Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries".
Further information on the state’s role in the Magdalene Laundry culture was revealed in the Dáil yesterday when Justice Minister Dermot Ahern answered parliamentary questions from Deputy Ruairi Quinn.
Mr Ahern said the women on remand were not kept at the homes indefinitely and that their period of detention rarely exceeded seven days. He also confirmed that payments were made by the Department of Justice for those remanded by the courts to the institutions.
"Limited records for one or two years have been located linking payments with individuals remanded to Our Lady’s Home, Henrietta Street. The records indicate periods of remand rarely exceeded seven days and one or two days was the norm. Further research is being carried out to establish if more comprehensive records were kept," he said. The minister confirmed the Henrietta Street institution was inspected by a state inspector when the religious orders sought financial support.
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