The Irish leader Enda Kenny made an historic apology to survivors of the Magdalene Laundries on Tuesday.
In an emotional speech which lasted almost twenty minutes, the Taoiseach said: "This is a national shame for which I say again I am deeply sorry and offer my full and heartfelt apologies."
The Fine Gael leader opened the Irish parliament debate on the McAleese report, a 1,000 page report which was published two weeks ago.
The McAleese report found that the State facilitated the referral of at least 26.5 percent of women to the laundries. More than 10,000 women and girls entered the 10 laundries between 1922 and 1996.
The Taoiseach described the women as wholly blameless.
Read More: Magdalene survivors call for fair compensation package ahead of Irish government meeting
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.”
During the debate Kenny said he had ordered a three-month review to be undertaken by the Law Reform Commission, Judge John Quirke. Upon completion, recommendations concerning payments and other supports for victims will be made.
"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," Kenny said.
“The reality is..... that for 90 years ..... Ireland subjected these women and their experience..... to a profound and studied indifference.
"We now know that the State itself was directly involved in over a quarter of all admissions to the Magdalene Laundries."
Read more: New York Irish woman shares her story of being adopted out of a Magdalene Laundry
The Irish leader said he hoped the publication of the McAleese report and the Governments’ official apology would help the healing process.
Kenny choked up when he delivered his concluding remarks: "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.”
The Deputy Prime Minister 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."
“These laundries were private businesses, run by those orders, which benefited from the unpaid labour of the women committed to them,” he said.
As the Dail statements into the State’s role in the laundries continued, Enda Kenny made a trip up to the Dáil’s public gallery to greet the Magdalene survivors gathered there.
In response, the Justice for Magdalenes (JFM) group welcomed the Taoiseach’s official apology.
“JFM arranged for a group of surviving women, children and family members to sit in the public gallery in Dáil Éireann and all of them wish to acknowledge Mr. Kenny’s sincere and heartfelt words of sorrow on behalf of all Irish citizens and the Irish State. This was a deeply meaningful experience for people who never thought they would see this day, and the official apology, come to pass. JFM thanks Mr. Kenny on their behalf,” the group said in a statement.
An Taoiseach Enda kenny: Statement On The Magdalene Laundries Report
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Switch to the desktop site to post a comment.Smyrnian | Feb 22, 2013, 04:49 PM EST
Idiot Marloz- unrelated, stupid comments again.
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IrelandNorth | Feb 22, 2013, 03:03 AM EST
There's got to be a happy medium between religiously inspired subservience to temporal autorities, and the condescening superciliousness of missionary positon Anglo-imperialism. Seems the whole Jesus movement went severaly badly awry when the Christian orthodoxists put their opportunistic fists into the chained mailed of Constantine.
anglo-norman | Feb 22, 2013, 12:39 AM EST
The Irish are now on their knee's to Europe. Thats what grovelling does for you. GROW UP Ireland!!!
seamus60 | Feb 21, 2013, 08:31 PM EST
Mortimer. Equal horrors that went on in other countrys is a seriously flawed excuse for what went on here.You`re starting to go on like one of those Sinn Fein supporters who believe its ok to shelter peadophiles as long as you`re one of them. The church and Adams have only themselves to blame. Blind loyalty is nothing but BLIND. Open your eyes and think for yourself.
Mortimer74 | Feb 21, 2013, 04:55 PM EST
For more on the truth behind how the Magdalene laundries have been used as an anti-Catholic propaganda tool read the highly informative article by Irish columnist Mary Ellen Synon from a few days ago in the UK's Daily Mail blog: “Magdalene laundries: or how British-bred eugenics put Magdalene across the world” Seamus60, I have no problem with a person following their conscience and doing what they think is appropriate - provided they are following their conscience and not an agenda.
Mortimer74 | Feb 21, 2013, 04:47 PM EST
"First, the Magdalene homes were not an invention of the Catholic Church. Second, the Magdalene homes did not exist only in Catholic Ireland. For example, the Magdalene Society of Philadelphia was established in 1800 by, among others, the Quakers. In the north of Ireland, the Church of Ireland and the Presbyterians ran Magdalene homes. Third, the laundries – or if you want to use the name I prefer because it is more accurate, the industrial workhouses -- were not established in Ireland to punish unmarried mothers. The first Magdalene asylum was established in Ireland in 1767 by a Protestant benefactor as a home for ‘penitent prostitutes.’ In fact, we still don’t have figures as to just what percentage of the inmates at the workhouses were unmarried mothers. All of which surprises you, no? Because the tenor of the attacks on the history of the Magdalene institutions – and God knows the history of these nun-run versions of hell deserves to be attacked – is that these workhouses were yet another example of the way a uniquely powerful Irish Catholic Church controlled and suppressed sexual activity until the ‘liberal’ new times came and freed us from all that. But you would have to cut out an awful lot of the history of the modern Western world to believe that one. Yet Ireland does. Ireland looks at the Magdalene horrors and is wilfully blind to the way they fit in with equal horrors going on in other countries at the same time. Somehow the Magdalene politicos – by whom I mean the journalists and politicians who are using the suffering in these workhouses to attack the Catholic Church, I do not mean the women who were once inmates -- want us to believe Ireland and the Church were uniquely grotesque in their attitudes to sex and women. The truth is far different....." (cont)
IrelandNorth | Feb 21, 2013, 02:27 PM EST
Powerful stuff! Would that politics could be as authentic as this always, in this the State (if not National!) parliament. One hopes that the two Magdalen launderies that were excluded from the McAleese Report due to a conspicuous absence of records (Cork and Dun Laoghaire) will be included like he suggested. The Magadalen Laundry girls/women/females were only 'fallen women' to the extend to which the Irish State and society dropped them. Pope Gregory the Great, who retrospectively defamed (ie libelled and slandered) Miriam of Migdala has much to answer for centuries later. Timely that we should wash or dirty linen in public, and not behind the walls of labour camps where Arbeit did not Mach Frei. Dept of Defence used such low cost services, as did hotels etc. Will they be compelled to contribute too, like the culpable religious orders. And are we sure we're not repeating the compulsion to exploit with free to employer work schemes for unemployed people?
seamus60 | Feb 21, 2013, 01:25 PM EST
Mortimer74. Maybe if Enda had read Brendans article, he wouldn`t have apoligised. lol
ancavker | Feb 21, 2013, 11:32 AM EST
wounded: It is because the Irish people have no gotten up from being on their knees.
barneyjo | Feb 21, 2013, 06:06 AM EST
@WoundedKnee - your insistence on the culpability of the Nuns for this scandal is premature in my view. As with earlier scandals involving Priest predators, it would be my fear that it will be shown that their evil and malign influence extended into these centres to the point that they were de facto "Leisure Centres" where they sate their carnal appetites with little or no risk to their reputation or their future in ministry. So when you speak of culpability, it is by no means certain that this began and ended at the front door of the institution itself. The same question asked before in the wake of the Murphy report must be asked; "Who else knew"?????
WoundedKnee | Feb 21, 2013, 01:42 AM EST
Obviously the nuns bear most of the culpability for this, but all Irish people should examine themselves before criticizing. What is it about Irish culture that seems to foster this kind of thing? Why are the Irish so subservient--there were many cases of parents handing over their children to these institutions and then not even checking on their welfare. How come similar abuses didn't occur in other Catholic countries, or at least in Catholic countries where there was no Irish influence? The Irish should look to their own pathologies.
corncrake | Feb 21, 2013, 12:17 AM EST
What happened at Magdalene Laundries was not unusual in the private sector either. As a 14 year old girl, working at a guest house in Bray, I had to sleep in galvanized shed, rise at 6 a.m. to gut chickens and live in fear of the "lady of the house", Mrs. Sonny Padden. Mrs. Padden assured my parents that I would be well cared for. Little did they know, being trusting people, that this woman was a cruel task master. I literally ran away from her establishment to another B&B on Dargle Road, to Mrs. Claude Cleary, who treated me like a member of her family. Stories like this were very common in mid 1950's. So, who or how, can any one person apologize for conditions that were "normal" for that period in Ireland.
Smyrnian | Feb 20, 2013, 10:02 PM EST
I can only speak for myself but I was in the Irish National Schools in the 1950's and 1960's and I can assure you that the brutality was horrific. I am not talking about rapping of knuckles or mere slaps or hair pulling here but serious physical stuff. Again, it's something that Irish people of a certain age know well but few talk about. This should be the next area of focus.
barneyjo | Feb 20, 2013, 07:55 PM EST
At Mortimer74 - did you actually even listen to the speech or watch it? In case you did not, let me give you a little reminder; "I believe I speak for millions of Irish people all over the world when I say we put away these women because for too many years we put away our conscience. "We swapped our personal scruples for a solid public apparatus that kept us in tune and in step with a sense of what was ‘proper behaviour’ or the ‘appropriate view’ according to a sort of moral code that was fostered at the time particularly in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. "We lived with the damaging idea that what was desirable and acceptable in the eyes of the Church and the State was the same and interchangeable."
Mortimer74 | Feb 20, 2013, 06:36 PM EST
My comments are taken from an excellent article by Brendan O'Neill. It was featured in the Telegraph but I can't post the link for some reason.
Mortimer74 | Feb 20, 2013, 05:12 PM EST
"In the Irish mind, and in the minds of everyone else who has seen or read one of the many films, plays and books about the Magdalene laundries, these were horrific institutions brimming with violence and overseen by sadistic, pervy nuns. Yet the McAleese Report found not a single incident of sexual abuse by a nun in a Magdalene laundry. Not one. Also, the vast majority of its interviewees said they were never physically punished in the laundries. As one woman said, "It has shocked me to read in papers that we were beat and our heads shaved and that we were badly treated by the nuns… I was not touched by any nun and I never saw anyone touched." The small number of cases of corporal punishment reported to McAleese consisted of the kind of thing that happened in many normal schools in the 1960s, 70s and 80s: being caned on the legs or rapped on the knuckles. The authors of the McAleese Report, having like the rest of us imbibed the popular image of the Magdalene laundries as nun-run concentration camps, seem to have been taken aback by "the number of women who spoke positively about the nuns"
Mortimer74 | Feb 20, 2013, 05:10 PM EST
"Catholic-bashers have embellished the truth about abuse in Catholic institutions. It's time to put the record straight. The publication last week of the Irish government's McAleese Report on the Magdalene laundries has proved kind of awkward for Catholic-bashers. For if McAleese's thorough, 1,000-page study is to be believed, then it would appear that those laundries were not as evil and foul as they had been depicted over the past decade. Specifically the image of the laundries promoted by the popular, much-lauded film The Magdalene Sisters – which showed them as places where women were stripped, slapped, sexually abused and more – has been called into question by McAleese. This has led even The Irish Times, which never turns down an opportunity to wring its hands over Catholic wickedness, to say: "There is no escaping the fact that the [McAleese] report jars with popular perceptions."
barneyjo | Feb 20, 2013, 05:02 PM EST
@seamus60 & cillowen - even so, An Taoiseach still walked that walk, and he named that shameful stain on the Irish Nation and its people AND HE DID SO ON BEHALF OF THAT SAME IRISH NATION AND ITS PEOPLE!! It can never now be unnamed despite the fact that some might wish it so.
Smyrnian | Feb 20, 2013, 03:18 PM EST
Well done all the same. Lets face it, anyone on this website "of a certain age" may also recall the terrible treatment and abusive conditions in the rural National Schools in the 1950's and 1960's. No apologies asked for but it was horrifically abusive and I remember it well.
seamus60 | Feb 20, 2013, 01:46 PM EST
He`s walking the only walk open to him, not bad at the acting either.
Searlit | Feb 20, 2013, 12:33 PM EST
What a great man he is. If you can't recognize the greatness in him, I hope someday you can. He is walking the walk.
pilib04 | Feb 20, 2013, 11:51 AM EST
Yeah, Kenny apologized after he was forced! He had to be dragged, kicking and screaming all the way! Now let's see those settlement suits!
cillowen | Feb 20, 2013, 10:43 AM EST
Shatter is keeping his eye on his puppet Enda - can't be too long more before he'll be having his boy apologize for what the Irish might have done during WWII to save Shatter's own, unfortunates. A piece of a nation, in name only, makes for a sickness that keeps on giving. See the insane acting out in Perth Australia and elsewhere - there but for the grace of God did many manage to survive.
TomSwinford | Feb 20, 2013, 10:40 AM EST
The government apology has been a long time coming but better late than never. The reason for the most recent delay by the Taoiseach was that government lawyers were working feverishly on making Kenny's apology "safe," or at least as safe as possible regarding the matter of state liability for its complicity with the Catholic Church in operating a system of punishment and slave labor as cruel and heartless as anything you would find in the most vile totalitarian countries. The inmates imprisoned behind these walls were often children, young girls whose only crime may have been as trivial as stealing a train ticket because they didn't have the money to pay for it. For this they were robbed of their freedom and worked like slaves. The McAleese Report makes brutal reading - you're left begging the question, how could this happen in Ireland, a civilized Catholic country. We know the answer and it should fill us with shame and revulsion.
Portia_O'Neill | Feb 20, 2013, 10:20 AM EST
Excellent Kenny, providing a just compensation to the living and a lasting memorial to the dead is proof that you deserve to lead the country.
antoman | Feb 20, 2013, 09:48 AM EST
Well done an Taoiseach. You have done the country, its people and the Magdalene survivors a great service.
johnshiel | Feb 20, 2013, 09:39 AM EST
pretty rare that any action by a government official has so much humanity in it, no?
handsome68 | Feb 20, 2013, 08:45 AM EST
A very good speech that, so seldom for a politician, included heart as well as packs a punch. Having seen the Magdalene Laundries movie and read about the situation later, the perpetrators as well as the victims need to have those dark days brought out into the light, and this Irish leader did that. More power to him for finally upholding the rights of the least among us, as Christ asked us to do.