Magdalene Laundries motion for discussion about an apology to be moved next week

(…more) seano, pls wise up on on-going Irish social and political affairs: there is an official report, to be headed by Senator McAleese (husband of former President McAleese), due out soon on the Magdalenes, which Sinn Féin, this past week, tried to hijack by pre-empting any resultant Govt motion with one of their own, solely for publicity and vote-catching purposes. That is why it was shot down by 75 TDs who want to keep the honour of passing the motion democratically on behalf of the Irish people instead of allowing bullying, vote-chasing Sinn Féin, which has only 14 out of 166 TDs in Dáil Éireann, to rabidly interfere in Sen. McAleese’s group’s investigation report work (as did the vote-chasing TDs who sided with SF, making up most of the 43 pro-motion TDs, not 45 as given before). That’s Democracy at Work, seano. There’s no shame in democracy, especially when it beats the pants off a thug-run tiny minority party like Sinn Féin. If you support SF from far from your own native home, then you are just as thug-led as they are. Pls don’t be so misty-eyed for yr oul’ misty isle to be so smugly “thugly”-led. God keep ya well under yr Commonwealth Queen!

seano, if you see me “proud of the 75”, then you must be misty-eyed. Nowhere have I said anything like that; I gave simple facts. Lookit, seano, me oul’ fellow-Dub - a couple of truths for you, hard as they may be to stomach, like the injustices meted out to some but not the vast majority of girls of the Magdelene Laundries: you abandoned your Republic of Ireland country for life in a land headed by the Queen of the UK and Commonwealth. You also abandoned your faith. Those are your choices and I respect your decisions, even if I grieve for yr faith decision. For an ex-Irelander and a non-practicing baptised Catholic, you sure spend a lot of time commenting on things you’ve abandoned, particularly denigrating and disrespecting comments of those holding on to all the truths that is dear to them as natives in their own Irish homes. Now get this please, seano, stop trying to be a back-of-the-class Smart Alec in yr oul’ age retirement and pls wise up (More...)

A shameful result for a simple apology. I see you're proud of the 75 hypocrites jacer.

Well, the motion has now been discussed in the Dáil (Irish Parliament) and shot down by 75 votes to 45. Now the baying hounds/houndesses want the 75 to be named and shamed. For what, I'd wonder? Isn’t this supposed to be how democracy works?

A poor attempt at Revisionist History by IrelandNorth. Maybe s/he needs to know the real history and traditionally handed-down stories, not the allegations, particularly relating to Mary Magdalene. Go to the mountains and villages around Ste Baume in France for the real history.

Mary Magdalen was the bride of Jesus, ie Mrs Christ. She bore him two children - Michael and Sarah. Mary Magdalene was defamed, libelled and slandered by Pope Gregory the Great to bachelorise Jesus to justify inheritance avoidant celibacy. Pope Adrian IV granted Ireland to King Henry II of England. The United Kingdom was bought with bribes and peerages. The partition of Ireland was brought about an extra-constitutional Ulster Volunteer Force with threats of violence. The IRA are a reaction to the UVF. Know your history. Cure the disease - not the symptoms! The existence of such labour camp launderies was because Ireland was a crypto-theocracy during that tragic phase of history.

If you wish to be fair and balanced Jacer you should include compensation be paid by the British for their atrocities or do you find them blameless.Is using Sinn Fein as comparison your way of giving solace to the "unchristian nuns"??

Seano, if you’d read my posts below you will see that I did call for parents to be held accountable (5.55pm). I agree that some nuns, but certainly not the majority of them, or their orders, should also be held responsible for abuses that did occur. My main point under the article above is that I would accept Sinn Féin looking for compensation for the Magdalenes when they offer compensation to the many innocents that their politics of the 70s & 80s killed and maimed. SF are only vote-hunting with this exercise and we should well recognise it for what it is. I agree w/ Happyhippo btw, so why are SF and many others dragging up the past?

The past is in the past,leave it there,learn from it, move on,there is no future in the past.

You're a heartless freak Jacer The parents and nuns should be condemned instead of you justifying their behavior. You need to reassess your Christianity. The nuns who too part should be damned for their unchristian actions,they were only one step up from the Nazi camp guards.

ReturnedYank: Most of the suffering the girls went through was imposed upon them by their parents’ abandonment of responsibility of them. Let's be honest: there were brats of girls in the Laundries who had the ‘de rigueur’ standard of punishment of the day imposed upon them, much in the same way as I was leather-strapped by Christian Brothers for my misdemeanours in my schooldays. That did me no harm apart from a stinging feeling in the hands (delightfully warming of a cold winter’s morning cycling, arriving late for school!) and I never felt I was abused by them in their doing so; so I never made a claim of abuse by CBs under the Ryan Report investigations, unlike many money-chasing chancers.

CelticQueenUSA – you’re obviously ignorant of the Irish Magdalene Laundries and why they existed. The girls who were sent into them were largely pregnant teenagers, causing much distress to the ‘good name’ of their (largely Catholic) families, who incarcerated them in secret in nuns’ orphanages to preserve the ‘good’ family name. To cover the cost of their keep by the nuns, the girls (many of whom, but not all, were the “brats” of their society’s day) were assigned duties of washing and drying out clothes (not a hard task; I worked in an industrial laundry when I was 14, it was clean and never strenuous work), which were charged to the real, shop-faced laundry shops and their customers, thus covering the cost of feeding, clothing and providing a bed and roof (‘keeping’) for the Magdalene unwanted children of Irish society back then (for that’s what they were back then). So if you want people to pay for the Magdalene injustices, look to the illegitimate parents of the girls first, or those who abandoned their babies.

@jacersagain Point scoring against SF will not detract from the barbarity of those laundries. Shame on you for minimizing the suffering of those women!

When Sinn Féin and its paramilitaries own up to the injustices of their reign of terror on all Irish and British people in the 70’s and 80’s and monetarily compensate all who suffered under their activities, I’ll agree to THEM putting a Dáil motion from for monetary compensatory justice for the Magdalene women in previous decades.

The true justice would be to prosecute the people who did this disgraceful business. All the apologies in the world cannot blot out what took place for these poor women.