Burton: Cabinet lacks key knowledge of issues due to shortage of female ministers
Joan Burton said that when issues such as children, care and “all sorts of struggles”, including the Magdalene Laundries, were discussed, it was “surprising” because “you have a lot of men around the table and they haven’t had much contact with some of these issues”.
The Social Protection Minister said the attitude of her Labour colleague, junior health minister Kathleen Lynch “was pretty much the same” when she joined the Cabinet for discussions on the McAleese report on the Magdalene Laundries.
Suggesting she had pushed the issue at Cabinet, Ms Burton said: “I was saying: ‘Hold on, there was a laundry attached to my school. I remember my mother on my holy communion day bringing me in.”
As deceased victims of the Magdalene Laundries were remembered at a ceremony in Glasnevin, Dublin, yesterday, in a radio interview, Ms Burton recalled growing up beside one of the institutions in Stanhope St, Dublin.
Ms Burton recalled that, for many of the girls and women in Stanhope St, one or both of their parents had died and they were put in orphanages and later in the laundry. She said this made her conscious that she was “very lucky in being given a chance” through adoption.
Ms Burton told Miriam Meets on RTÉ Radio that she was brought up in Dublin but born in Carlow.
“I was given up for adoption when I was about six months old,” said Ms Burton. “I came to Dublin. For a couple of years I was in foster care, then eventually I got lucky and I was adopted by the Burtons.”
Ms Burton and Children’s Minister Frances Fitzgerald were the only women appointed among 14 ministries by Taoiseach Enda Kenny, in Mar 2011. Jan O’Sullivan has since been appointed a “super junior” as Minister for Housing.
She did not rule out a future role as leader of the Labour Party. “At the moment, people expect politicians to focus on sorting out their country rather than on internal party disputes,” she said.
