PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent
THE STATE has been called on to apologise to former residents of Magdalen laundries and to set up a new redress scheme, distinct from that available at the Residential Institutions Redress Board, for former residents of the laundries.
James Smith, associate professor at the English department in Boston College and author of the recently published book Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries, and Mari Steed, of the Justice for Magdalenes group, said the State must “recognise, and thus apologize for, its failure to protect the legal rights of women who always remained citizens of the State”.
They said that, while recognising “the key difference in the nature of the State’s relationship to the Magdalen laundries” they “challenge the current terminology that characterises women as ‘voluntary’ committals to Magdalen laundries. We assert that the State was an active agent in ‘referring’ many of these so-called ‘voluntary’ committals, and as such the State is complicit in and culpable for the abuses therein.”
They have sent a proposed draft of a new redress Bill for Magdalen women to Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmore and members of the party’s front bench, to coincide with the private members’ Bill which the Labour Party will propose in the Dáil from tomorrow. The draft Bill proposes a distinct redress scheme for survivors of the laundries, to which girls were frequently transferred from residential institutions. It proposes an apology by the State to these women, and that the State maintains Magdalen burial plots.
The laundries were run by the Sisters of Mercy, Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge, Sisters of Charity, and the Good Shepherd Sisters.
The Irish Times 6th July 2009
