Doing justice to victims of the laundries

AS THE testimonies in today’s newspaper from survivors of the Magdalene laundries show, the psychological scars created by their brutal incarceration will never go away.

But while there is no remedy for the precious years lost under the cruel hand of State and ecclesiastical authority, the false burden of shame and stigma carried by thousands of Irish women can certainly be lifted and the injustice of their treatment acknowledged.

This week’s reception at Áras an Uachtaráin honouring more than 220 former Magdalene women, and the gala dinner at the Mansion House achieved several purposes.

President Michael D Higgins said he hoped the occasion would help ‘bring the darkness into the light’. The two-day event was also a public celebration of women who had never been shown anything but cold indifference by the State.

But the task of making reparations for the sins of the past is far from over, and given that most of the women are elderly, there is an urgency about the measures.

The flaws in the redress scheme must be rectified on several fronts.

Women who worked in the laundries but were excluded from the scheme as they were registered in adjoining mother and baby homes must be included, and women who are wards of court and may still be living in Church-run institutions deserve independent advocates.

Thirdly, the eligibility criteria must take account of the women’s own testimonies of how long they spent in the laundries. Compensation payments up to now have relied on the nuns’ accounts.

But possibly the biggest tribute we can pay the former Magdalene women is ensuring that the conditions that engendered such suffering are never repeated.