Protestors outside the headquarters of the Sisters of Mercy on Baggot Street, Dublin, last night demanding the religious order pay compensation to the survivors of the Magdalene Laundries.
From top: Lia Cummins; group shot; group shot; Eleanor White and Kerry Guinan
Previously: Make Them Pay
(Laura Hutton/Photocall Ireland)
Article 44
1. The State acknowledges that the homage of public worship is due to Almighty God. It shall hold His Name in reverence, and shall respect and honour religion.
2. 1° Freedom of conscience and the free profession and practice of religion are, subject to public order and morality, guaranteed to every citizen.
2° The State guarantees not to endow any religion.
3° The State shall not impose any disabilities or make any discrimination on the ground of religious profession, belief or status.
4° Legislation providing State aid for schools shall not discriminate between schools under the management of different religious denominations, nor be such as to affect prejudicially the right of any child to attend a school receiving public money without attending religious instruction at that school.
5° Every religious denomination shall have the right to manage its own affairs, own, acquire and administer property, movable and immovable, and maintain institutions for religious or charitable purposes.
6° The property of any religious denomination or any educational institution shall not be diverted save for necessary works of public utility and on payment of compensation.
Josh writes:
This [The Magdalene survivors’ redress] is very clearly a matter relating to compensation. As far as I can see it’s there in black and white, the state doesn’t have to ask for the property at all, it’s false modesty…
UPDATE:
We don’t know our bottom from our Bunreacht (see comments). Apologies.
Previously: I Looked Into His Eyes And Told Him My Story
“What these religious orders have done is so disrespectful to all the women who were in those laundries.
“They destroyed our lives; they took my human rights away from me. They brought shame and hurt to our country and the Government is just allowing them to insult us like this.
“I thought Enda was a better than this. I looked into his eyes and I told him my story. He quoted my story the night of the official apology and now our leader allows these nuns to do this?”
Magdalene survivor Marina Gambold, above.
Previously: Bad Habits Die Hard
(Laura Hutton/Photocall Ireland)
President Higgins hosts Magdalene survivors at Aras an Uachtarain this afternoon.
From top: Bernadette Fahy, Geraldine Cronin and Mary Condon; Group shot; Mary Smyth; Miriam Malone and Geraldine Cronin.
(Laura Hutton/Photocall Ireland)
The McAleese Committee explicitly went outside its terms of reference and gratuitously added a chapter of figures supplied by the Religious.
— Simon McGarr (@Tupp_Ed) June 27, 2013
Previously: The McAleese Report: ‘Incomplete And Not Independent’
The Magdalene Report: A Conclusion
Irish government to pay survivors of Catholic-run Magdalene laundries compensation of at least 34m euros http://t.co/QXTMO0BmW3
— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) June 26, 2013
A memorial park will also be dedicated to the #Magdalene women, Justice Minister Shatter has said.
— BreakingNews.ie (@breakingnewsie) June 26, 2013
And with that.
The nuns were in the clear.
Pic via The Media Pool
Magdalene Survivors Together has criticised Justice John Quirke (above) for his handling of meetings yesterday with survivors.
Survivors ranging in age from 60 to 87 years were kept waiting for over 90 minutes.
One wheelchair-bound woman was unable to stay awake as she waited to see Justice Quirke.
From RTE:
Steven O’Riordan of Magdalene Survivors Together said that the women, who come from many parts of the country, had turned up a Dublin venue at 3.30pm as requested.
He said they were left waiting for over an hour-and-a-half before Mr Justice Quirke met any of them.
He said the women were asked about their current circumstances regarding family, work and housing and not about the kind of compensation scheme they wanted.Mr O’Riordan said that he found this confusing.
Justice Quirke, President of the Law Reform Commission, was commissioned to set up a redress scheme following the McAleese Report last month which identified the state was directly involved in running the laundries.
Some Magdalene survivors are still without pension books and others don’t know their next of kin.
In February the Taoiseach told the Dail:
“I am confident that this process will enable us to provide speedy, fair and meaningful help to the women in a compassionate and non adversial way.”
Ninety minutes.
RTE’s Drivetime report here. Scroll to 01:52:00
Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s Statement on Magdalene Report (Merrion Street)
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?”
Now, now, don’t dress it up in vague platitudes, sis.
Previously: Result!
(Mark Stedman/Photocall Ireland)
The Magdalene Report.
A clean sheet for Catholics everywhere.
I expect I’ll get it in the neck for this one. I’m not saying that the use by the Irish state of the Magdalene laundries as reformatories to which people could be sent without explanation or due process was in any way defensible. And Irish nuns could undoubtedly be tough in those days (my wife has fond memories from her convent school in Swanage, now a holiday hotel, of being called “a bold girl” and having her hand thwacked with a 12-inch ruler). But, says one woman quoted [in the report], there was in the Magdalene laundries no physical punishment that she saw, and though things were “not rosy”, “we were treated good and well looked after”
William Oddie.
Not the Goodie.
