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TAOISEACH ENDA KENNY has stopped short of apologising for the State’s involvement in the Magdalene Laundries.
In a heated exchange in the Dáil this afternoon, the Taoiseach repeatedly said he was sorry that the stigma attached to the women in the laundries was not removed before now.
He also apologised for the length of time it had taken for a government to carry out a report into the institutions and said he was sorry that the women lived “in that kind of environment”.
The long-awaited report by Senator Martin McAleese into the laundries was published at 4pm. The report has found the Irish State was directly and fundamentally involved in the laundries.
Survivors of the laundries say they were unhappy with the Taoiseach’s initial response.
“That is not an apology,” Maureen Sullivan said.
“This is not acceptable. It is a cop out,” Stephen O’Riordan, spokesperson for Magdalene Survivors Together said.
The Taoiseach was responding to questions from Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald who described the laundries as an Irish form of slavery and asked when the Taoiseach would be offering a full apology to the survivors.
In response, Enda Kenny said that the thousand-page report needs to be read in full before reacting to it. He said he plans to hold a Dáil debate on the report in two weeks.
The Taoiseach repeatedly emphasised the ways in which women entered the laundries, noting that 10 per cent of women were sent to one by their family while 19 per cent of women entered themselves. He said that the report reflected Ireland between the 1920s and 1950s which was a “harsh and uncompromising and authoritarian” country.
The Taoiseach said that the State was responsible for making or facilitating 26.5 per cent of admissions to the laundries.
Mary Lou McDonld told the Taoiseach that the women in the laundries were not “residents voluntarily offering their labour [but] young, vulnerable women” who believed themselves to be imprisoned.
(Video: Thejournalvideo/YouTube)
Additional reporting by Sinead O’Carroll
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I unfortunately had to register the death of a family member recently. Got the paperwork from the hospital in January and wanted to get it sorted quickly but was told the next available appointment at the registry office was in March. Five days is great in theory but good luck getting that go happen in practice
@Laura Diver: I’m very sorry for your loss. I hope you won’t mind me asking a genuine question? Why did you have to do it in person? My mam passed away 18 months ago and we were allowed to email, was that just a covid thing I wonder? You’d think if it worked they would allow it to continue. My dad passed away more than 10 years ago and I can’t remember how we registered his, though I know we waited 6 months for his death certificate as it was a sudden death requiring post mortem. Again my condolences
Beggars belief. Currently getting through probate is a nightmare (minimum 16 weeks), even with a will made. Can’t believe the system is efficient enough to get through this in a month.
OK so I don’t give a damn about the flipping records and what statistics they want to record (unless my loved one did die from plague or the likes). Hounding the grieving like that is disgraceful.
@Helen Downey: absolutely agree
@Helen Downey: we were waiting 19 months to get rhe inquest for my brother.
@Helen Downey: some families might want it done as soon as possible for their own reasons, it’s not just about stats.
Three months may be longer than necessary in most instances, but the suggested timeline here is disgracefully short for a grieving family, 4-6 weeks would be far more reasonable and compassionate
@Jo H: Presumably dependants will need this proof to access pension and death grants and so on?
@Fiona Fitzgerald: Yes, financial institutions etc. won’t do anything until they are provided a copy, but not everyone needs or is able to consider starting to organise that stuff within 10 days so that might not be a driving factor for many. I know people who have acted on it that day after a funeral, others who take longer. It’s a very personal thing. There should of course be a deadline, I just think the one being proposed is too tight.
The problem is that they need to fix the system behind the scenes first rather than reducing the time for families to register as the first port of call. What is the point of reducing that if it then becomes impossible to do? I mean really.
And as for triggering other services – that would be great but lets face it, departments in this country don’t talk to each other. Or else they get a bit too ahead of themselves – my dad’s pension from the Dept. of Education was stopped on his date of death based solely off his death notice in the paper. Which didn’t contain enough information to really identify him down to an individual. Absolute madness.
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