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Had they done so, they would have found a number of admissions, published and unpublished, of the extent to which the state used Magdalene homes and other convents.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.