JUSTICE FOR MAGDALENES TO END ITS POLITICAL CAMPAIGN

Justice for Magdalenes (JFM), the survivor advocacy group, is announcing the end of its political campaign, begun in June 2009.

As outlined in JFM’s “Public Notice” on the group’s website, the political campaign had twin objectives, namely:

(i) to bring about an official apology from the Irish State, and

(ii) the establishment of a compensation scheme for all Magdalene survivors.

And, as the “Public Notice” explains, “[o]nce JFM achieves these objectives, the door will be open to every survivor and/or her family members and/or other groups representing Magdalene survivors to pursue their own claim for redress.”

As a voluntary group, and having worked at maximum capacity over the past four years, JFM believes it has achieved all that it can by way of political advocacy. The responsibility to ensure that justice is delivered to survivors of the Laundries now rests with all members of Irish society, including Church, State, families and local communities. It is the collective responsibility of all citizens to ensure that the promise of An Taoiseach’s official State apology (19th February 2013) is delivered upon.

JFM has contacted all of the survivors and relatives with whom we have been in regular contact over the past number of years to inform them of our withdrawal from the political arena. We will continue to assist these survivors and relatives in our personal capacities as they engage with the Magdalen Commission. It has been our great privilege to earn the women’s trust and we will always feel indebted to them for sharing their life stories with us.

JFM has taken the following steps in recent months to prepare for the group’s withdrawal from the political arena:

JFM has published a number of questions and concerns in relation to the Magdalen Fund/Commission (http://www.magdalenelaundries.com/JFM_Questions_and_Concerns.pdf and below) that remain unanswered. Mr Justice Quirke is due to report to Government the criteria by which the Fund will operate in the coming weeks. We have circulated these questions to members of the Oireachtas and enclose them below to ask for continued vigilance from the media and public in relation to ensuring justice for Magdalene women.

We have also done the following:

In March 2013, JFM published two self-help guides, one for survivors and one for family members. The Guides are available at the JFM website:

http://www.magdalenelaundries.com/Survivor%20Guide%20to%20Magdalen%20Commission.pdf

http://www.magdalenelaundries.com/Relatives%20Guide%20to%20Magdalen%20Commission.pdf

We have widely circulated both Guides to TDs, Senators, Magdalene representative groups, the Church Hierarchy and Religious Orders, NGOs, Family Resource Centres, and Irish Immigrant Centres world-wide.

On 7th March 2013, JFM made a submission to the UN Committee Against Torture (UNCAT) requesting that the Committee “monitor the design and implementation of the forthcoming Magdalene Laundries reparations process and […] make recommendations to, and engage in dialogue with, the Irish government as it deems appropriate.” By doing so, we anticipate that UNCAT will continue to focus its attention on the State’s fulfilment of its obligation under the UN Convention against Torture to ensure that Magdalene survivors obtain adequate reparation. We also expect that the government’s “Scheme” will be considered in detail when Ireland is next examined by the UN Human Rights Committee in July 2014 and again by UNCAT in 2016.

We are currently in correspondence with NGOs, academics, trade unionists and the Irish Human Rights Commission to ensure that there is appropriate follow-up on the Human Rights issues raised in this campaign.

JFM’s information phone line will continue to operate a referral service but now with an automated message directing callers to resources which are already available, including [National Counselling, Family Resource, FLAC, etc.]. This information is also available on JFM’s website.

JFM has made available an income and expenditure statement for the period since June 2009 at (http://www.magdalenelaundries.com/JFM_inc_exp_statement_May 2013.pdf).JFM has always tried to operate in a transparent manner, especially in terms of its finances. While our group never applied for nor received funding from State or Church sources, our work did benefit from a number of timely awards and donations, particularly from the Ireland Fund of Great Britain and the Feminist Review Trust. We dedicated much of these funds to the effort of collecting and transcribing survivor testimony as part of our principal submission to the Inter-Departmental Committee.

JFM’s website will continue to be available as a source of information for survivors, relatives, researchers and all others with an interest in the history of Ireland’s Magdalene institutions and the campaign for justice. JFM will also continue to operate its Facebook page for the foreseeable future.

JFM’s continuing projects

While withdrawing from the political advocacy arena, JFM will continue to engage in issues of transitional justice, including a suitable national memorial, upkeep of Magdalene graves, educational and curricular initiatives and the completion of the Names Project. All materials related to the JFM political campaign will be archived and publicly available as part of the Magdalene Institutions: Archival and Oral History Project operated by the Women’s Studies Centre in the School of Social Justice at University College Dublin and funded by the Irish Research Council. JFM will continue to support this project and encourages all survivors, family members, religious orders and other witnesses to do likewise.

Thank you

In withdrawing from the political advocacy arena, JFM takes this opportunity to thank everyone who has helped the group accomplish its goals. Our campaign was truly a collaborative effort.

First and foremost, we thank the survivors and family members who have guided our campaign and enriched each of our lives on a deeply personal level.

We thank our wider past and present advisory committee, who made invaluable contributions throughout our campaign.

We thank the citizens of Ireland and other nations who have supported the cause throughout this process.

We thank the individuals who have taken time out of their lives to assist the cause, including Raymond Hill, who went over and above the call of duty in his pro-bono assistance, Aoife, who has run our Information Line during this busy time, “F” (who wishes to remain anonymous), who assisted us in ensuring that the women buried behind 12 foot walls and locked gates at Sunday’s Well in Cork are remembered, members of PILA (a project of FLAC) and the 2,235 members of our Facebook group.

We thank all politicians, past and present, who advocated on our behalf. In particular, we thank those who engaged with the Oireachtas “All-Party” Ad Hoc Committee on the Magdalene Laundries, which proved instrumental in helping the cause for justice gain traction within Leinster House.

Likewise, we thank the NGO community for their support and assistance, and in particular we acknowledge the efforts of the NWCI, ICCL and Amnesty International-Ireland for their support, advice and direction in pursing the International Human Rights aspects of JFM’s campaign. Likewise, we acknowledge as instrumental the role played by the Irish Human Rights Commission (IHRC) and UNCAT in affirming survivors’ right to justice and redress.

The JFM group also thanks the media in Ireland and abroad for the interest they have taken in this story. Their coverage of this campaign helped generate important political leverage at key moments over the past four years. Thank you!

Last but not least, as individuals we thank our partners and family members who have shown great patience to us in the course of this campaign.

It has not been possible to name all of those who have assisted us, however JFM will be proud to publish a Roll of Honour on our website in due course.

Dublin City Council’s planners are expected to approve the winning scheme for a memorial to victims of institutional abuse at the Garden of Remembrance in Parnell Square after they receive further information on the €500,000 project.

All six shortlisted entries for an international competition — including the winning scheme, “Journey of Light”, by Dublin-based Studio Negri and Hennessy & Associates — were unveiled tonight by Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn.
The winners say their project “creates a fluid progression between the Garden of Remembrance, which commemorates those who died for the cause of Irish freedom, with a memorial dedicated to the young victims of abuse” in Irish institutions.
A passageway, lit at night and flanked by fossilised limestone walls as well as “gently cascading” waterfalls, would be inserted to the rear of Oisin Kelly’s Children of Lir monument, in line with the Irish flag, with the State apology inscribed at child’s eye level.

The proposal for a memorial was made in the Ryan Report, which said it should “spotlight an episode of significance in the history of the State [and] provide a point of reference with sensory significance that keeps alive the memory of those who suffered loss and pain”.

After consulting with survivor groups, a memorial committee decided to hold an international competition to find the right design. From 32 entries, the shortlist of six was selected by a jury chaired by Sean Benton, former chairman of the Office of Public Works (OPW).

The site adjacent to the Garden of Remembrance was made available by the OPW for the project, which the memorial committee — appointed by Mr Quinn — said should be “an enduring symbol of lost innocence that inspires others to ensure the protection of all children”.

Mr Quinn said he believed the winning scheme would be “a testimony to one of the darkest chapters in our State’s history and … serve as a constant reminder that we must never let such horrendous crimes against children happen again”.
The other shortlisted entries were submitted by Cleary & Connolly, known for their quirky art installations, with Hugh Maguire and Vincent O’Shea; FKL Architects with sculptor Michael Warren; Peter Maybury and Tom de Paor Architects, NJBA and Seamus Nolan.
All six schemes are on exhibition at the Darc Space gallery, 26 North Great George’s Street, until May 3rd. Further information from http://www,darcspace.ie

Frank McDonald, Irish Times Newspaper.

Nick Bramhill

Actor Gabriel Byrne has launched a stinging attack on the Catholic Church and described it as a “force for evil”.
The veteran Hollywood star had a strict Catholic upbringing in Dublin and spent five years in a seminary training to be a priest.
But he said it was his own unhappy memories of the seminary, where he says he was sexually abused by a priest, that made him decide not to raise his two children as Catholics.
And in an interview, the 62-year-old says he remains unrepetentant on his views of organised religion and even claimed the Catholic Church once drew inspiration from Hitler’s Nazis.
Recalling the the time he was sent away to an English seminary at just 11 to study for the priesthood, he said: “It was part of the culture. It was a very religious, oppressive society, though we didn’t see it as oppression at the time.
“I remember walking with my mother along a narrow pathway and she was holding onto a pram and two priests came along the footpath and she had to wheel the pram into the road to allow them to walk by, these mysterious men in black. I think the religion I had — and I don’t have any now — was rooted in a kind of childish fantasy.”
He continued: “The Jesuits have that expression, ‘give us a child until he is seven and he will be ours for life’. That was why the Catholic Church and the Nazi party fed off each other. “
After the rally at Nuremberg, the then pope said: “We need to be doing something similar and we have the theatre for it with St Peter’s, so that was when he started coming out on the balcony to address the crowds.
“And the Nazis meanwhile were learning from the Jesuits and making sure they got the child by seven in order to have them for life. The Hitler Youth. “De Valera signed the book of condolence when Hitler died. There was a sneaking regard among many Irish people for Germany and Hitler. England’s pain was Ireland’s gain.”
The New York-based actor, who recently triggered a storm when he described The Gathering as a “scam”, said in the interview with the Sunday Telegraph’s Seven magazine that he feels fortunate to have escaped from the clutches of the Catholic Church.
“They have way too much hold on this country. It’s a very corrupt and nefarious institution. The nuns were vicious because you have all these women living together in denial of love.
“They turned inward on themselves, became twisted creatures. I saw nuns being awfully cruel to me and to my sister. Horrific. Horrific.”
He went on: “I think if you are lucky you eventually come to a place where you are able to question these things, and I did. I read a lot on the subject and had many conversations and I have come to the conclusion that the Catholic Church is a force for evil.
“How can you enslave women? How can you deny men who are supposed to be serving you the comfort of marriage and children? How can they deny sending condoms to Africa? How can they deny women becoming priests? It’s an anti-woman and anti-love church.”
Referring to his decision not to raise his two grown-up children [he had with ex-wife, actress Ellen Barkin] as Catholics, he added: “I never discussed religion with them. As far as I’m concerned, it didn’t do me any good.
“And it’s interesting to watch two people grow up without it and find their own kindness and conscience.”
Byrne’s latest move, All Things To All Men, is out next Friday.

The RISF Board is a new body, established under the provisions of the Residential Institutions Statutory Fund Act 2012. The Board will oversee the use of the cash contributions of up to €110 million pledged by the religious congregations to support the needs of some 15,000 survivors of residential institutional child abuse. These survivors have received awards from the Residential Institutions Redress Board or equivalent court awards. The support to be provided will include a range of approved services, including health and personal social services, education and housing services.

The Board is chaired by Ms Sylda Langford and comprises four ordinary members who are former residents of institutions:

Mr Paddy Doyle
Ms Bernadette Fahy
Ms Phyllis Morgan
Mr Martin Power
and four other ordinary members:

Mr Damian Casey
Mr Austin Currie
Mr Tom Daly
Ms Katherine Finn BL
At its meeting today the Board agreed the appointment of Ms Mary Higgins as chief executive officer, from April 2013. The staff of the former Education Finance Board are transferring to the RISF with effect from 29th March 2013. The Board has commenced work on the arrangements to be put in place for the operation of the Fund.

Further publicity will be undertaken as the work of the Board progresses and a website with detailed information will be available on the Fund’s services in due course.

Editors’ Note:

Board Members Details

Sylda Langford

Chair

Former Director General of the Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs. Previously Assistant Secretary General in the Department of Justice and Law Reform. She has extensive experience in policy formulation and delivery and has a professional background in social policy and social work. She is Chair of the Citizen’s Information Board and a member of the New School Establishment Group.

Paddy Doyle

Former resident. Disability activist and author of “The God Squad”. Member of Committee to oversee the Memorial to victims of institutional abuse.

Bernadette Fahy

Former resident. Counselling Psychologist. Outgoing member of the Education Finance Board. Member of Committee to oversee the Memorial to victims of institutional abuse.

Phyllis Morgan

Former resident living in the UK. Coordinator at the Irish Survivors Advice and Support Service, founded by the Irish Women Survivors Support Network.

Previously with the London Irish Survivors Outreach Service.

Martin Power

Former resident living in the UK. Social worker. Previously involved in youth justice and the NHS.

Damian Casey FCMA

Assistant National Director, Finance Shared Services in the HSE. Previously worked in the private sector in management accounting, financial analysis & reporting.

Tom Daly

Former teacher and Adult Education Officer and Education Officer with City of Cork VEC.

Austin Currie

Former TD and Minister of State1994 to 1997. Previously Minister for Housing, Local Government and Planning in the Northern Ireland Executive. Candidate in 1990 Presidential election.

Katherine Finn

Barrister specialising in Criminal Law. Previously a prosecution solicitor in the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

CEO Details

Ms Mary Higgins was most recently an independent Management & Social Policy Consultant. Previously she was the Director of the Homeless Agency and the earlier Homeless Initiative. She has also held the position of Director of Threshold with previous experience in Emigrant Advice and Cherish.

The RISF Board is a new body which is being established under the provisions of the Residential Institutions Statutory Fund Act 2012. The Board will oversee the use of the cash contributions of up to €110 million pledged by the religious congregations to support the needs of some 15,000 survivors of residential institutional child abuse. These survivors have received awards from the Residential Institutions Redress Board or equivalent court awards.

The support to be provided will include a range of approved services, including health and personal social services, education and housing services. To date €40m in cash contributions have been received from the congregations and a further €27m is expected on the establishment of the Fund.

Minister Quinn said, “The establishment of the Residential Institutions Statutory Fund Board represents a critically important step in responding to the needs of those who were subjected to horrendous abuse while children in residential institutions. I greatly appreciate the fact that the members have agreed to contribute to the work of the Board and I wish them well in their work. While the tasks facing the Fund are significant, I am confident that it will make a meaningful contribution to the wellbeing of the survivors of institutional abuse.”

The composition of the Board is as follows:

Ms Sylda Langford, Chairperson

Ordinary Members (former residents of institutions)

Mr Paddy Doyle
Ms Bernadette Fahy
Ms Phyllis Morgan
Mr Martin Power

Other Ordinary Members

Mr Damian Casey
Mr Austin Currie
Mr Tom Daly
Ms Katherine Finn BL
The Board members are appointed for a four year term of office, commencing on 25th March, 2013. The positions are not remunerated.

The Minister also announced that Ms Mary Higgins is to be appointed as chief executive officer of the RISF Board. She was selected following a recruitment campaign held by the Public Appointments Service.

The Minister also commenced Part 4 of the 2012 Act, which dissolves the Education Finance Board and transfers its remaining functions and staff to the RISF, with effect from 29th March 2013.

Fri, Mar 8, 2013,

Two nuns who were involved in running Magdalene laundries have hit back at criticisms of the four congregations which operated the 10 such institutions in Ireland up to 1996.
In interviews to be broadcast on RTÉ Radio 1’s The God Slot at 10 o’clock tonight “Sister B” said: “All of the shame of the era is being dumped on the religious orders.”
When asked whether an apology might be appropriate after the McAleese report on the laundries, “Sister A” responded, “apologise for what?”
Reporter Claire McCormack interviewed the nuns for America magazine and was allowed share it with The God Slot on condition that the nuns, their congregation and where they worked were not named. Their words are voiced by an actor.
“Sister B” claimed that religious congregations in Ireland have been “stigmatised by the media”. “Some people claim generational hurt but we are suffering the generational hurt as much as any of the residents out of this and it is unfair . . .
“The sins of society are being placed on us, the scapegoat, and we are being sent off into the desert because that’s the only way they can get rid of the stigma. It’s the media who are portraying us in this light.”
Asked whether an apology might be in order, “Sister A” responded: “Apologise for what. Apologise for providing a service? We provided a free service for the country. Okay, it may have been putting away an ugly part to society, which it was in a sense, but it was the family who chose to put them there,” she said.
“Some of the orders accused educated the country, nobody is blamed for that. Society at the time had a great need to help these women and we stepped in . . .
“There was a terrible need for a lot of those women because they were on the street, with no social welfare and starving. We provided shelters for them. It was the ‘no welfare’ state and we are looking with today’s eyes at a totally different era.”
Asked why the four congregations were not speaking out more, “Sister A” said: “Because we would be stoned! . . . Society is more inclined to believe the bad stories and people have forgotten the good we have done through all our years.”

MICHAEL O’REGAN and MARIE O’HALLORAN

Tue, Feb 19, 2013

Taoiseach Enda Kenny has apologised to the women who spent time in the Magdalene laundries.

In an emotional speech, which was greeted by loud applause, Mr Kenny said: “This is a national shame for which I say again I am deeply sorry and offer my full and heartfelt apologies.”

Opening the Dáil debate tonight on the McAleese report, Mr Kenny said the Magdalene laundries were reserved for what was offensively and judgementally called fallen women.

The women, he added, were wholly blameless.

He added: “I, as Taoiseach, on behalf of this State, the Government and our citizens, deeply regret and apologise unreservedly to all those women for the hurt that was done to them, for any stigma they suffered as a result of the time they spent in the Magdalene laundry.”

Mr Kenny said the women deserved more than a formal apology.

He said the Government had asked the president of the Law Reform Commission, Judge John Quirke, to undertake a three-month review and make recommendations about the criteria that should be applied in assessing the help the Government could provide in the area of payments and other supports, including medical cards, psychological and counselling services and other welfare needs.

The terms of reference for Judge Quirke were published this evening following Mr Kenny’s speech.

When Judge Quirke has reported, a fund will be established to assist the women based on his recommendations.

“I am confident that this process will enable us to provide speedy, fair and meaningful help to the women in a compassionate and non-adversarial way,” Mr Kenny said.

“The reality is….. that for 90 years ….. Ireland subjected these women and their experience….. to a profound and studied indifference,” Mr Kenny said.

“We now know that the State itself was directly involved in over a quarter of all admissions to the Magdalene Laundries.”

Mr Kenny said he hoped the publication of the McAleese Report and the Government’s apology would make a contribution to the healing process.

For decades thousands of women and girls, often unmarried mothers and women who left their husbands, were placed into work-houses.

Concluding his apology, Mr Kenny said: “Let me hope that this day and this debate heralds a new dawn for all those who feared that the dark midnight might never end.”

Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore said he wanted to join the Taoiseach “in offering, on behalf of the State and the Irish people, a heartfelt apology to the survivors of the Magdalene Laundries.”

Commenting on the possibility of restitution, he said there was “a role” for the religious orders which ran the laundries, “to make a fair contribution, along with the taxpayer”.

“These laundries were private businesses, run by those orders, which benefited from the unpaid labour of the women committed to them,” he said.

Earlier, Independent councillor Mannix Flynn spoke at a candle-lit vigil which was held in solidarity with the women outside Leinster House.

Mr Flynn said the laundries represented “a regime of torture and a regime of slavery throughout this country.”

He said there were “many more” such scandals to be uncovered. He added that “we must remember the children out there still looking for their mothers.”

Spokeswoman for Justice for Magdalenes Claire McGettrick said “these women are our sisters,our mothers, grandmothers, our neighbours and our friends.”

“For decades they have walked a lonely road,” she said.

The vigil was organised by the Justice for Magdalenes (JFM) group and the National Women’s Council of Ireland. Singer Mary Coughlan also took part.

Support package

Three groups that have represented the women – JFM, the London Irish Women Survivors Support Group and Magdalene Survivors Together – agree that a package to assist the women should include pensions, healthcare, counselling, housing services and advice.

They also agree that lump-sum compensation should be paid to them. JFM has proposed a €100,000 sum in addition to a package of services including pensions and lost wages. That figure “reflects that women are forgoing important legal rights to go before the courts”, JFM has said.

At the weekend Minister of State for Health Kathleen Lynch said the package provided to the women would be assessed on an individual basis.

The McAleese report found that the State referred or facilitated the transfer of at least 26.5 per cent of women to the laundries, based on available records. It also found direct State involvement in key areas such as the funding and inspection of the laundries.

More than 10,000 women and girls entered the 10 laundries between 1922 and 1996. Referrals made or facilitated by the State included 2,124 of the 8,025 cases for which reasons are known.

The report also stated that 61 per cent of the women spent less than a year in the laundries and that their average age at time of entry was 24.

© 2013 irishtimes.com

Bruce Arnold

Irish Independent, Monday, February 18, 2013

The burden of historical truth, in respect of the Magdalene Laundries, is huge. It also was in respect of the Industrial Schools. It has not been fully confronted in regard to either of these monstrous blemishes on the State. The grim reality of this faces Enda Kenny as he tackles a history of events made more confused by the Report presented to Government by Martin McAleese. History cannot be confined to the period since 1922. What the State took over from the British and how it then changed it has also to be part of the picture.

If we go back well before the State’s foundation, to the first twentieth-century census in 1901, the material that bears upon the present question of the Magdalene Laundries emerges more clearly in historical terms, and though painful, sets the context of how the system worked then and later under State control.

For example, the Dublin Sisters of Charity had a total of sixteen convents run by 341 nuns. Their most notable property was St Vincent’s Hospital, then in Stephens Green, ‘a most remunerative institution, judging by the vast sums of money it receives, and by its continuous absorption of expensive private houses to accommodate the ever-increasing number of paying patients’.

Least-known was the ‘Donnybrook Magdalene Penitentiary’, in the charge of 19 nuns who directed the “free” labour of a hundred penitents. ‘The bedroom doors are locked at night and they are bound to stay in that penitentiary at the hard work of laundry for the best years of their lives; and should they ever leave it, they find themselves in a world in which they are more helpless than they were on the day of their birth’.

An outside observer wrote of the Magdalenes in chapel: ‘They were dressed as outcasts, and they looked outcasts. And a more melancholy existence I could not imagine than theirs; changing from the soapsuds in the steam laundry to the confession-box, or the chapel, the only recreation they get. Far indeed would it seem to have been from the thoughts of Our Saviour to have condemned the original Magdalene to such a life as the poor galley-slaves in these penitentiaries lead.’

Rudimentary clothing (the girls were never seen), indifferent food, no freedom, no money, no education, no future – that was their lifelong fate. This record, twenty years before the foundation of the State has been airbrushed out of existence, as have many other historical circumstances. The McAleese Report has mistakenly belittled monetary gain through the twentieth century.

There were 93 Dublin convents run by different orders, enjoying government endowments, deathbed gifts and legacies, charity sermon subscriptions, alms and earnings from laundries. The congregations were spread across the city, a collective community of 1649 professed nuns who, together with novices, postulants and the like came to 3000 souls ‘enough to people a fair-sized town’.

The new State’s baleful inheritance of misery continued to flourish and expand. The Church exercised greater power and tolerated less control than during British rule. These nuns dominated the world of ‘care’ for penitential girls and miscreant boys and girls, in a large agglomeration of laundries and industrial schools the true history of which has yet to be confronted.

We know a good deal but are in denial about how bad it was and how much the new Irish State collaborated in the illegalities, brutalities, deprivations and criminal assaults. Escape clauses aligned the State with the religious communities, denying the rights of those interned. The historical truth has never been properly addressed. It is too shameful. Successive governments have covered up and we are in danger of further deliberate obfuscation over the State’s responsibilities in order to make Mr Kenny’s Apology “safe”.

In clearing up the embarrassment of the Industrial School scandal, the Irish State eliminated all those who failed to sign the waiver and the oath of secrecy, reducing the abused to a tidy enough 15,000. The legal side cost us a fortune while the recompense to victims was more modest. Those outside the fence, whom even the Christian Brothers thought should receive statutory fund payments, have been excluded by the State and “erased” from Irish history.

The McAleese Report, discussing available records, encounters (or fails to encounter them because they are not there) 27,000 personal files “missing” from Department of Education archives. They are said to have been “thrown out in the Department’s ‘general clear out’.” What an absurd piece of nonsense! These are legal documents, seen by others, not by inmates who are still living.

The Magdalene Laundry girls were different. They did not generally merit ‘personal files’. They did not merit their own names and identities. They merited nothing.

It is an historical truism that official reports, media coverage and government statements can create the impression that we have all relevant evidence. This view then enters the history books as established historical fact.

My own experience, with the Industrial School scandal, convinced me that the State was involved in cover-up, in effect a crime against the ex-inmates, against the country and against history. This I suggest is true with the Magdalenes.

Ms Justice Mary Laffoy blew the whistle when she resigned from the Industrial Schools Commission having been obstructed by the Department of Education. The whistle-blowing was ignored. Her plea to have the inquiry removed from that department’s control was rejected by Mr Ahern’s Government.

History can change the doubtful into actual reality. The McAleese Report is based on a widespread acceptance of evidence that is far from reliable with large chunks of it “lost”.

The Report plays down the question of beatings in the Laundries contradicting what the ex-inmates say. This flies in the face of the curatorial reality in such institutions which were excessively punitive physically as in the Industrial Schools. The public has become immune and does not wish to re-visit the endless narrative of violence against the person, starvation, illegal imprisonment and destructive humiliation of more girls than the Report tells us were there, mincing its words over the full awfulness of what went on.

How reliable is inmate testimony of those in the custody of the former Laundry proprietors? An Artane inmate, complaining of violence and interviewed in the presence of his assailants by a bishop, recanted his complaint. As soon as the bishop had left the premises the assailants took their revenge on the wretched complainant.

Tthe challenge facing the Taoiseach is a huge one. If he seeks the whole truth he needs to start from a platform of great scepticism.

17 FEBRUARY 2013

Catholic Church orders have surrendered ownership of 41 properties with a total value of €41m to the State as part of the redress scheme, new figures obtained reveal.

School buildings, convents, vestries, playing fields and associated lands across Ireland are included in the list.

The highest value single property was religious grounds in Merrion, south Dublin, which was valued at €8.9m.

Documents sent by Sean O Foghlu, secretary general of the Department of Education, to the Public Accounts Committee, show that the properties were handed over “under the terms of the 2002 Indemnity Agreement”.

However, according to his letter, significant issues remain outstanding in relation to the “legal requirements” of the agreement and the Chief State’s Solicitor’s Office is currently continuing to “pursue” the matter.

“The physical transfers of the properties have taken place and all of the properties are in use or available for use by the intended recipients.

“While they have transferred physically, the Chief State Solicitor’s Office continues to pursue the legal requirements under the indemnity agreement,” he wrote.

Mr O Foghlu said “the department agreed in principle” with the religious orders that in total 64 properties would be accepted “subject to good and marketable title and agreed valuations”.

He went on to say that the number was reduced to 61 properties, after the department accepted “a cash sum in lieu of three properties where the marketable title could not be established”.

According to the documents, apart from the significant site at Merrion, eight other properties worth more than €1m were surrendered.

They include a Terenure Secondary School, which was valued at €4.5m; St Teresa’s convent at Temple Hill in Blackrock, which was valued at €3.1m and a Traveller site also in Blackrock which was valued at €3.1m. Other significant properties handed over included two separate properties in Tuam, Galway, valued at €3,020,000; St Anne’s Secondary School, which was valued at €2,600,000; Holy Cross Gardens, Killarney (€1,270,000); 23 Parnell Square, Dublin (€1,270,000); and Goldenbridge Group Homes, which was valued at €1,269,700.

The documents also show that the remaining 20 properties have not yet been handed over because they are still “subject to good and marketable title being furnished”.

The total cost of offering redress to the victims of abuse has soared to almost €1.4bn.

Under a controversial 2002 indemnity agreement, 18 religious orders who ran care institutions pledged to contribute €128m in cash, property and counselling services towards redress costs for abuse survivors.

Courtesy Independent.ie