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Updated 11.30am
THE STATE OMBUDSMAN has dismissed objections made by the Department of Justice to an investigation into 27 complaints made by women who worked in Magdalen Laundries regarding the Magdalene Restorative Justice scheme.
Many of those women had their applications for redress denied by the Department as they were not officially recorded as having been resident in the 12 institutions covered by the scheme.
Upon receiving a draft report in recent weeks, the Department responded to Ombudsman Peter Tyndall citing its unhappiness that the State officials who administered the scheme were not interviewed as part of the investigation.
Likewise, Secretary General of the Department Noel Waters suggested that the Ombudsman’s adverse findings were possibly due to “a fundamental misunderstanding of the scheme”.
Speaking at today’s launch of the final report, titled ‘Opportunity Lost’, Tyndall told TheJournal.ie that he considered such objections to be “disingenuous in the extreme” and an example of “departmental stonewalling”.
“The department was consulted extensively and at length over the course of this investigation,” he said.
However, Tyndall added that he was “hopeful” that the Department of Justice would act upon his recommendations that the women who were denied redress should have their applications reassessed with a view to approving them, in light of a statement from the Minister Charlie Flanagan this morning.
Earlier, Flanagan said that “full and careful consideration will now be given to all the recommendations in… (the) report”.
“These women have waited long enough for justice,” Tyndall said.
Complaints
Recommendations made on foot of Ombudsman investigations are more often than not accepted and adopted by the State body in question.
In the report, published this morning, Tyndall criticised aspects of the Department of Justice’s administration of the Magdalen Restorative Justice scheme.
The report resulted from an investigation after 27 women, who had lived in convents and laundries, complained that they had been denied redress.
The Department of Justice had denied the womens’ applications saying that they had not lived in one of the 12 institutions covered by the scheme.
Many of the women in question were younger than the majority of the women in the Laundries, and as such, though spending much of their time in the laundry in the company of the same women, were registered as being officially resident elsewhere, in training facilities linked to the main laundry for example.
“My investigation focussed on whether these women were eligible for the scheme and on how the scheme was administered,” Tyndall said.
The evidence shows that these women should have been included and that there were flaws in the way the scheme was administered.
He also disclosed that, despite discussions between the DJE and his office, “it has not been possible to resolve the complaints”.
The Ombudsman’s findings were:
The report has recommended that any denied applications be reconsidered, with a view to their being accepted, where there is evidence that a woman worked in a listed laundry but was recorded as having been ‘admitted’ elsewhere.
It has likewise recommended that any applications where there was a dispute over the length of stay in an institution should be reviewed, and that ‘guidance’ be produced centrally on the development and operation of future such redress schemes.
However, the list of institutions will not be expanded as a result of the Ombudsman’s recommendations.
The full report can be read here
First published 7.15am
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The things people get compo for and then there’s this! Just give them the money and let them have a bit of comfort fgs
@Patricia Ellis Dunne: Yes, these women do deserve compensation. Last week a survivor of clerical abuse was hospitalized after going on hunger strike in protest at the trauma inflicted on survivors by Caranua, the state redress authority. When are FF-FG going to start to treat these people as decently as they claim to treat them when they’re giving speeches in the Dail?
Wouldn’t be like the State to do something like that at all now would it!? Sometimes I really really dislike this country.
@Arnold Alley: I can’t disagree with that, I really meant Official Ireland to be honest
How thoroughly Christian of them.
And the church’s marketing team has just pulled off ‘Red Wednesday’ where cathedrals around the world are lit up in red in aid of “justice and victims of suffering”. Practice what ye preach ye hollow, defunct crowd of hypocrites.
Rants McCrank:The decisions to deny redress was done by the organs of our State in our name ,we are all responsible.
@Brian O Reilly: no we are not all responsible. I did not abuse or ill treat anyone and I don’t see why me and my children, through borrowed money for compensation, should have to pay. Your decision and opinion to centralize the liability for all wrongdoing to all citizens is a dream for the legal profession.
@Ranty McCrank: Its a pity the fathers can’t be found and the pensions/estates used to fund this. Remember when lovely auld Johnny dies and leaves the house to Mary & Paddy but unknown to them Jimmy is being denied a share.
@lavbeer: Presumably he would have a will leaving it to who he wants.
So 27 people would get on average a € 82,000 payout,which = 2.214 m
Around 2 million Irish people are paying taxes
That means it will cost me about €1
I’m livid at that loss..How will I cope!!
@Francis Mc Carthy: That’s for this incident alone and 27 people. They are all adding up and increasing in payment amount. If the 1 in 4 stat for abuse is true then 1.25 million people could claim for “redress”. That is €102 billion. Indeed how will we cope. We truly are a failed state with no true leadership. All divided and fighting for scraps.
So who will be Who’s redressing them? Dumped in the taxpayer again? Decisions like this to garner votes from lobby groups may please those members but the working people remember the politicians that are making innocent workers financially liable for the grave misconduct of others.
Why can’t the state sue the Vatican. To get the compensation money back? The way it is. it’s the taxpayer paying the compo!
The DJE is an appallingly bad and oppressive Government Department. It is a law unto itself.
Kudos to the Ombudsman for standing up to Fine Gael on this one.
Stop the prevarication and cough up the dough.
That’s what happens when you combine corruption, nepotism, cronyism, ineptitude and a blatant lack of any kind of morals or dignity!
Shameless crooks running the Banana Republic of Ireland but people care more about the soccer team getting hammered by the Danes!
Its kind of hilarious these days the way women come out with these #metoo stories about how a man grab their arse or tits and the whole world cries for them while the mans career is ruined. meanwhile people have been screaming from the roof tops for decades about the abuse the catholic church carried out in this country and there’s hardly a word about it and 0 justice
@Alfred Pennyworth:
Just do not forget that many a woman’s life was ruined because the fathers of their children abandoned them and that is why they ended up in these awful Laundries. It is the State that is now denying these women the compensation that they deserve to get without delay so they can at least feel that their suffering will be recognized. But no the State could not wait to give the Banks who ruined the country Shedloads of money but they make the women beg for the crumbs .
Flannagan reminds me of Noonan when he dragged dying people into court in the attempt to save the state money and cover up a deadly mess in the blood transfusion scandal.
@Donal Desmond: this happened long before Flanagan became Minister. Get a grip. It’s a review of an administrative scheme.
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