Government challenged on Magdalene files

THE matter of redress for women and children who were incarcerated in — and used as forced labour for the profit of — Magdalene homes must be kept in the public eye. The state must not be permitted to shirk its responsibility for ensuring that the individual cases of the survivors are fully investigated.

Education Minister Batt O’Keeffe’s assertion that the inmates were “employees” suggests that his advisers have done little research in state archives.

Had they done so, they would have found a number of admissions, published and unpublished, of the extent to which the state used Magdalene homes and other convents. There is evidence too that, as early as the 1930s and 1940s, it was recognised that there was no statutory basis for holding even women convicted of crimes in such places, although it was the state’s practice to do so.

There are references in state papers to the fact that they were entitled to walk free, if they only knew that they could do so. If those holding the highest office in the state knew this but failed to inform the inmates of it, then the state must acknowledge its role in the incarceration of its citizens in such asylums and homes.

It seems clear that, over decades, the Department of Justice, the Department of the Taoiseach and the Department of Education were aware of the fact that women were denied their freedom, their constitutional rights, and were effectively trafficked and used as forced labour.

What was the responsibility of the churches within whose homes these women and children were detained? Was it greater than the state’s? Did the treatment of all women and children in such homes reflect the experiences of those brave women and their sons and daughters who have given their oral evidence in public?

One barrier to investigation of such issues is that the archives of the Magdalene homes are closed to scrutiny by historians. We call on the Government to exert pressure on those who hold these archives to open them, to ensure that these women’s experiences are sensitively investigated and that ministerial pronouncements on the matter of redress are based on a knowledge of the fullest evidence.

Mary Clancy MADr Carla King Dr Sandra McAvoy Dr Mary McAuliffe Dr Jennifer Redmond Dr Sonja Tiernan Dr Maryann Valiulis (president)

Women’s History Association of Ireland