Orders ‘made lots of money’ from laundries

Orders of nuns involved in the operation of the Magdalene Laundries have been urged by TDs to make a contribution to a survivors’ compensation fund.

Labour TD, Eamonn Maloney, said he did not accept the finding in the report on the laundries by Martin McAleese that they did not make money from the free labour of women and girls who worked in them.

“They did make money, they made lots of money,” he said during Dáil statements on the report, adding that most commercial laundries in the 1940s and 1950s closed because of competition from the Magdalenes.