THE HSE has provided € 87 million in the past five years to three of
the four religious congregations that ran the Magdalene laundries
between 1922 and 1996, according to Minister for Health Dr James
O’Reilly.
He disclosed the figure in response to a question from Sinn Féin’s Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin.
He
found it “astonishing” and said it contrasted “sharply with the State’s
treatment of the women imprisoned in these institutions, who received
no pay for their years of work, are in receipt of no pension and were
excluded from the Residential Institutions Redress Scheme”.
If the
State could “pay € 20 million per year to the orders who ran the
laundries, it can certainly give the women who survived them their due”,
he said.
In 2006 the Sisters of Mercy, the Sisters of Charity and
the Good Shepherd Sisters received a total of €5.8 million from the HSE
for health services provided.
That rose to €19.6 million in 2007,
to €20.09 million in 2008, €20.4 million in 2009, and was €19.68
million in 2010.
Absent from the HSE list are the Sisters of Our Lady of
Charity, who also ran Magdalene laundries.
The Mater hospital in
Dublin is run by the Sisters of Mercy while St Vincent’s is a Sisters of
Charity hospital.
The Sisters of Mercy are also key providers of
education in the State with involvement in more than 60 pre-schools,
primary schools and secondary schools.
They have associations with four community schools and long involvement with Mary Immaculate College in Limerick.
Following
publication of the Ryan report in May 2009, each of the 18
congregations that ran residential institutions for children
investigated by Ryan, including the four that also ran Magdalene
laundries, agreed to contribute 50 per cent of the €1.36 billion cost to
the State of redress for people who had been in the institutions as
children.
To date the contribution of the congregations is €
476.51 million, leaving more than € 200 million to reach their € 680
million share.
Last April Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn
indicated that the Government was to ask the congregations to hand over
titles to property worth up to € 200 million, to make up the shortfall.
Two
of the 18 congregations indicated they had no resources at all to
contribute. They are the Rosminians and the Good Shepherd Sisters. The
latter have received more than €14.4 million from the HSE since 2006.
The
State and congregations agreed to set aside € 110 million for late
applicants for redress, which could include Magdalene women.