Department handed report on numbers sent to laundries

A REPORT prepared by the HSE detailing how many young mothers were transferred from state-run mother-and-baby homes to unregulated Magdalene laundries has been handed over to the Department of Health.

Documentation obtained by the Justice for the Magdalenes (JFM) group from state archives show these women were routinely transferred to the religious orders without any prior agreement on when they would be released.

Many of these women spent large periods of their lives confined in the laundries working for nuns, without pay or pension.