THOSE WHO reacted with a wry smile to the Irish Human Rights
Commission response last Wednesday, to that Government announcement of
an inter-departmental committee to look at the Magdalene women’s issue,
could be forgiven.
The commission gave it a “cautious” welcome.
Last
November the same commission called on the Government to immediately
establish a statutory inquiry into the Magdalene women’s treatment and
to provide redress, as appropriate.
But that is not why those who did, smiled last Wednesday.
The clue lay in the RTÉ
Prime Time programme of June 7th last.
There, human
rights commission president Dr Maurice Manning was in uncompromising
mood about Government departments when it came to the Magdalene women.
He was interviewed in connection with the United Nations Committee
Against Torture report, published the previous day.
It too had called for a statutory inquiry into the Magdalene laundries but also for prosecution of those who abused the women.
Manning did not hold back.
The IHRC report had been met by a “wall of official indifference”, he said.
It
(the commission) “had been criticised by the Department of Justice
because we hadn’t spoken to the Department of Justice and the reason we
weren’t speaking to the Department of Justice is because they weren’t
speaking to the [Magdalene] survivors and they had come to us”.
That
was not all.
“Then the department said ‘why don’t you hold an inquiry
[into the laundries]’ knowing we hadn’t the resources to do it.”
He
hoped that “the official indifference and indeed hostility which has
been there for such a long time [to the Magdalene’s issue], is now put
behind.”
But the auguries are not good.
Last month, when he
appeared before the committee against torture in Geneva, Department of
Justice secretary general Seán Aylward was all sweetness and light.
He
told the committee how he “personally” met “a deputation of women who
had sad experiences to account of their early childhood in these
institutions”.
Indeed, and seemingly tempted to boast but deterred
by a restraint more becoming a senior public servant, he told the
committee, “I think we were the first department to agree to meet them”.
From
which first meeting he learned, as he told the committee, that “the
vast majority of women who went to these institutions went there
voluntarily or, if they were minors, with the consent of their parents
or guardians”.
Which is quite remarkable.
This reporter was
present at the Department of Justice that day, November 4th, 2009, when
Aylward and other officials met the deputation of women survivors of the
Magdalene laundries he was referring to.
Five women met him and
assistant secretary James Martin for two hours.
They were accompanied by
Steven O’Riordan of Magdalene Survivors Together and director of the
film The Forgotten Maggies.
As this reporter established that day,
not one of those five women entered the laundries voluntarily or with
the consent of parents or guardians.
You may have heard one of them, Mary Smith, on RTÉ Radio 1’s
This Week programme last Sunday.
She told interviewer Avril
Hoare how she “cried and cried” on being committed to the Good Shepherd
laundry in Cork by “the Cruelty man” (from the then National Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Children).
How “once that door was locked,
never, never, were you going to get out of there”.
Hardly sounds
like voluntary admission.
That none of the women entered the laundries
voluntarily was underscored by O’Riordan again this week.
He found
it “quite ironic” that Aylward should tell the UN committee the women
entered voluntarily “when he himself met with members of Magdalene
Survivors Together and was told that the girls did not enter voluntarily
and were kept against their will while forced to carry out work they
did not want to do”.
O’Riordan concluded, reasonably, “clearly the Government is not or has not been listening to the Magdalene survivors”.
Government
officials have form where this issue is concerned and as indicated by
Manning.
Is it not why former minister for education Batt O’Keeffe ended
up apologising for describing women held in the laundries as
“employees”, in correspondence?
In September 2009, he sent a
letter to former Fianna Fáil TD Tom Kitt, a longtime supporter of the
Magdalene women’s cause, expressing deep regret for “any offence caused
by my use of the term ‘employees’ when referring to these women”.
O’Keeffe added: “I fully acknowledge that the word ‘workers’ would have
been more appropriate”.
The cussedness of Government officials
where this tragic issue is concerned makes it imperative that the
independent person, yet to be appointed by the Government to chair its
inter-departmental committee, is a formidable character.
And there
is hope.
At that May 24th meeting, Aylward told the committee: “We have
a new administration and I don’t fully know the mind of our Ministers –
we’ve two Ministers directly concerned with this issue and the
Government as a whole . . . I can’t go further than that because the
issue is still in play”.
The two Ministers concerned are Minister
for Justice Alan Shatter and Minister for Older People Kathleen Lynch
who are, most decidedly, “still in play” where this sad issue is
concerned.
The Magdalene women and supporting groups place great faith
in both Ministers.
Their further disappointment simply cannot be
countenanced.