PATSY McGARRY Religious Affairs Correspondent
Dissatisfaction with the pace of Government action when dealing with the issue of Magdalene Laundries was forcefully expressed by members of the Justice for Magdalene’s (JFM) group at Leinster House this afternoon.
Addressing a cross-party group of TDs and Senators, Katherine O’Donnell who is the head of Women’s Studies at UCD recalled Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s “great speech about the Vatican” in the Dáil but pointed out that it was still the case that some women survivors of the laundries “still live in Magdalene Ireland.”
She knew three such women who were dying of cancer. They “needed an apology (from the State) urgently as well as redress and restorative justice now,” she said.
In his speech to the Dail on July 20th last year the Taoiseach noted that “this is not Rome. Nor is it industrial-school or Magdalene Ireland, where the swish of a soutane smothered conscience and humanity and the swing of a thurible ruled the Irish-Catholic world. This is the ‘Republic’ of Ireland 2011.”
Lawyer Maeve O’Rourke said that next Monday JFM was planning to meet Felice Gaer, vice President of the United Nations Committee on Torture (UNCAT), in Dublin.
They would advise her that, despite UNCAT recommendations last year where the Magdalene Laundries were concerned, there had still been no apology to survivors of the Laundries, no redress and no independent investigation into the full facts of abuse in the Laundries.
Ms O’Rourke, who presented the JFM case to UNCAT in Geneva last year which led to the Committee making those recommendations, acknowledged that the Government had set up the inter-departmental committee under the chairmanship of Senator Martin McAleese to inquire into the Laundries.
But, she said, “it is still our case that the women are still no closer to redress or an apology – and that they cannot afford to wait any longer.”
She also said JFM reserved the right “to call for an investigation with statutory powers, which would augment the voluntary nature of Senator McAleese’s committee with powers to compel evidence in an open and transparent manner.”
Prof Jim Smith of Boston College presented a detailed 27-page report to the TDs and Senators which established “overwhelming evidence of State interaction” with the 10 Magdalene Laundries in the Republic.
