It’s been five years since the Government apologised to the women of the Magdalene Laundries but it has yet to implement restorative justice, writes Maeve O’Rourke

More than €25m has been paid out to just over 680 Magdalene Laundry survivors under the redress scheme.

A US academic wrote to the UN in 2013 claiming material relating to the Magdalene Laundries called parts of the McAleese report “into question on a number of rather serious fronts”.

The HSE has refused to say why concerns about infant deaths and possible trafficking from Bessborough in Cork and the Tuam Mother and Baby Home were not reported to the then health minister.

The McAleese inquiry into Magdalene laundries was informed in 2012 about “disturbing” infant death rates in excess of 50% at the Tuam Mother and Baby Home.

Concerns were expressed at Cabinet in 2011 that, if there was an inquiry into Magdalene laundries, it could lead to calls for inquiries into abuses in mother and baby homes, psychiatric institutions, and foster care settings.

A religious order that ran two Magdalene Laundries told the Government that its decision not to contribute any money to the redress scheme for survivors was based on the findings of the McAleese Report.

The McAleese report is “neither accurate nor respectful” in the suffering women endured in Magdalene laundries, it has been claimed.

Two Government departments had access to a 2012 report on “shocking” levels of infant deaths at Bessborough Mother and Baby home — despite initial claims that it did not have the report.

Over 1,600 women died in Magdalene laundries — more than double the figure cited by the McAleese report.

New research has cast "serious doubt" on one of the key findings of the McAleese report concerning the length of time women spent in Magdalene laundries.

Four social justice organisations are now calling for the inquiry into mother-and-baby homes to be widened to include Magdalene laundries and county homes.

Survivors of Magdalene laundries will begin to receive enhanced pensions and weekly top-up payments from the Department of Social Protection in the coming week, as part of the redress package designed by Mr Justice John Quirke.

Adoption, children’s and human rights organisations have welcomed the decision by the Department of Children to set up a statutory commission to investigate practices, deaths, illegal adoptions and vaccine trials at the country’s mother-and-baby homes.

Two of the four Orders which ran the Magdalene laundries have reaffirmed their refusal to offer any financial contribution to the compensation fund for survivors.

A number of Magdalene survivors have been offered state compensation payments reflecting much shorter lengths of stay than the women endured.

The Government has been told that its refusal to commission an independent investigation into the treatment of women in Magdalene Laundries is an issue that is “not going to go away”.

Justice For Magdalenes (JFM) Research has hit out at the Government’s response to UN criticism’s of the McAleese report as “an outrage” which “beggars belief”.

Questions surround a section of the McAleese Report which states it asked the Ryan Commission to contact seven women mentioned in the Ryan Report who were in Magdalene Laundries.

The UN committee which forced the Government to investigate the Magdalene Laundries has criticised the McAleese report into them as “incomplete” and lacking “many elements of a prompt, independent, and thorough investigation”.

Victims groups have accused the McAleese committee of not being “transparent” by springing interviews on survivors without prior knowledge and weakening the inquiry by not issuing a public call for victims to come forward.

TOMORROW’S Magdalene laundries’ report is the last chance the 1,000 or so survivors still alive have to get the public vindication they crave.