Irish PM: Magdalene laundries product of harsh Ireland

 

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny apologises for the stigma and conditions suffered by women who were inmates of the country's Magdalene laundries.

• Laundries survivor: We were slaves Listen
• 'Apology would be worth a million dollars' Watch  5 February 2013 Last updated at 16:59 GMT
  
  

  
  

  By Shane Harrison BBC NI Dublin correspondent
  

  The Magdalene laundries were presented as a better way of life for "troubled" women
  Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny has apologised for the stigma and conditions suffered by women who were inmates of the Magdalene laundries.
  Mr Kenny said the laundries had operated in a "harsh and uncompromising Ireland," but he stopped short of a formal apology from the government.
  About 10,000 women passed through the laundries in the Irish Republic between 1922 and 1996, a report has revealed.
  The laundries were Catholic-run workhouses that operated in Ireland.
  Mr Kenny expressed his sympathies with survivors and the families of those who died.
  
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  Magdalene Laundries

  

  • Originally termed Magdalene Asylums the first in Ireland was opened in Dublin in 1765, for Protestant girls
  • First Catholic home was founded in Cork in 1809
  • Envisaged as short-term refuges for 'fallen women' they became long-term institutions and penitents were required to work, mostly in laundries on the premises
  • They extended to take in unmarried mothers, women with learning difficulties and girls who had been abused
  • The facilities were self-supporting and the money generated by the laundries paid for them
  • Between 1922 and 1996 there were 10 such laundries in the Republic of Ireland
  • Many Irish institutions, such as the army, government departments, hotels and even Guinness had contracts with Magdalene laundries
  • The women toiled behind locked doors unable to leave after being admitted and while the laundries were paid, they received no wages
  • The last Magdalene asylum in Ireland, in Waterford, closed in 1996
  • The congregations which ran them were the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy, the Religious Sisters of Charity and the Sisters of the Good Shepherd
  
  He added that the report found no evidence of sexual abuse in the laundries and that 10% of inmates were sent by their families and 19% entered of their own volition.
  The inquiry chaired by Senator Martin McAleese found 2,124 of those detained in the institutions were sent by the authorities.
  There will be a debate in the Irish parliament in two weeks time giving members time to read the 1,000-page document.
  Girls considered "troubled" or what were then called "fallen women" were sent there and did unpaid manual work.
  In 2011, the UN Committee Against Torture called on the Irish government to set up an inquiry into the treatment of thousands of women and girls.
  In response, the Irish government set up an inter-departmental committee, chaired by Senator Martin McAleese, to establish the facts of the Irish state's involvement with the Magdalene laundries.
  Survivors and representative groups, and the religious congregations, co-operated with the departmental committee.
  Amnesty International called for former residents of Magdalene laundry-type institutions in Northern Ireland to come forward to report their experiences to the Historic Institutional Abuse Inquiry.
  Amnesty spokesman Patrick Corrigan said: "Those who suffered abuse as children are now eligible to come forward to the inquiry, recently established by the Northern Ireland Executive, and we would encourage them to consider doing so."
  

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