The Irish Human Rights Commission (IHRC) has called on the Government
to immediately establish a statutory inquiry into the treatment of
women and girls in Magdalene laundries.
At a press conference in Dublin, it also said appropriate financial redress should be made available to survivors.
In
a statement, the Government said it regretted that
relevant departments were not offered an opportunity by the commissions
to contribute to its “considerations of this matter to facilitate a
fully balanced evaluation of all the facts”.
“The Government is also conscious that the Magdalene laundries were run by a number of religious congregations.”
It
said it has asked the Attorney General and relevant Departments to
consider the IHRC's report.
The Government also noted the commission has
not decided to establish an inquiry itself.
Commission chief
executive Eamonn Mac Aodha said this morning a statutory inquiry was
necessary because one held by the IHRC could not deliver the apology and
redress sought from the State for those who had been in the laundries.
“We do not have those type of powers,” he said.
Last June, the
Justice for Magdalenes group (JFM) asked the commission to conduct an
inquiry into the treatment of women and girls in Magdalen laundries.
The
commission agreed to the request and said it would examine the human
rights issues arising from its investigation.
The principle
findings from the commission was that there was clear State involvement
in the cases of girls and women who were sent to the Magdalen laundries
following a court process.
It found that questions arose as to
whether the State’s obligations "to guard against arbitrary detention
were met in the absence of information on whether and how girls and
women under court processes resided in and left the laundries”.
It
also found that the State may have breached its obligations on forced
or compulsory labour under the 1930 Forced Labour Convention “in not
suppressing/outlawing the practice in laundries and in actually engaging
in trade with the convents running the laundries for goods produced as a
result of forced labour”.
It also found that the State may have
breached its obligations “to ensure that no one is held in servitude
insofar as some women and girls in the laundries may have been held in
conditions of servitude after the State assumed obligations under
Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights in 1953.”
“We
are dealing with a small and vulnerable group of women who the
Government admitted as far back as 2001 were victims of abuse, but who
have received no proper recognition for the hurt they experienced and
continue to experience,” IHRC Commissioner Olive Braiden said.
"They
were omitted from the Residential Institutions Redress Scheme based on
the argument that there was no State responsibility, although it is
clear that the State and Irish society in general bears responsibility
for the way they were treated."
Commission president Dr Maurice
Manning said the State cannot abdicate from its responsibilities in
relation to the treatment of women and girls in the laundries.
“To
vindicate the human rights of the women concerned, the Government must
immediately establish a statutory inquiry mechanism to gather the
evidence necessary to establish the facts behind the treatment of these
women,” he said.
The Justice for Magdalenes group welcomed the report's findings and recommendations.
Spokesman Prof James Smith spoke of survivors of the laundries as an ageing and vulnerable population at home and abroad.
“The
time to act is now,” he said. “The Government must move beyond its
‘deny ‘til they die’ policy. Only then will it disprove one Magdalene
survivor’s telling observation: ‘they’re hoping that in 10 years we’ll
all be under the sod and they can relax’.”
JFM has written to the
four religious congregations which operated the Magdalene laundries
three times in the past year.
To date, none of the congregations has
indicated a willingness to meet the group.
SIC: IT/IE