Outrage as Magdalene Laundry nuns refuse to pay victims compensation

Girls in the grounds of a Magdalene Laundry. The Irish government is set to pay $45 million to the victims of these Catholic institutions.

The four religious congregations that ran the Magdalene Laundries have announced they will not contribute to the compensation fund for victims.

The Mercy Sisters, the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, the Sisters of Charity and the Good Shepherd Sisters have informed Minister for Justice Alan Shatter in recent days that they will not pay into the fund, the Irish Times reports.

However the religious orders said they were willing to cooperate fully with other recommendations made by Mr Justice John Quirke.

In his recent report Quirke recommended that the Irish government pay at least €34.5 million ($45 million) in restitution to laundry survivors.

A spokesperson for Shatter said he was ‘disappointed’ with the decision of the religious orders.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny has called on the four religious orders to “reflect” on their refusal to pay into the. redress scheme.

“I cannot force them to, because the scheme was not designed on that basis,” he said.

Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald said it was “absolutely unacceptable.”

“The bottom line is these four religious orders, and the State, were responsible for the effective wrongful incarceration of girls and women who were forced to work for no pay within a brutal regime.

“Agreeing to merely hand over records and look after elderly residents who gave their lives to the laundries falls far short of what is expected by way of a contribution from the religious orders,” the Sinn Fein Deputy added.

Meanwhile controversial Catholic League president Bill Donohue has argued that the laundries were a myth.

“[T]here was no holocaust, and there was no gulag,” he writes in a special report titled “Myths of the Magdalene Laundries.”

“No one was murdered. No one was imprisoned, nor forced against her will to stay. There was no slave labor. Not a single woman was sexually abused by a nun. Not one. It’s all a lie.”

Donohue agreed that the working conditions in the laundries were “harsh,” and that they included “standing for long hours, constantly washing laundry in cold water, and using heavy irons for many hours.”

However he doesn’t believe that qualifies as slave labor.

“Drudgery? Yes,” he writes. “But if this is ‘torture,’ then it is safe to say that millions have suffered this fate without ever knowing they did.”

via Outrage as Magdalene Laundry nuns refuse to pay victims compensation | Irish News | IrishCentral.

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.

“Not only has the church as yet to apologise for their role in operating these prisons, they do also have a role — because they made money — in compensating people,” he said.

The Dublin South West TD added that politicians must not be afraid to “stand up and say this”.

The Government has so far refused to say what contribution, if any, it will seek from the orders.

Four religious orders involved in the running of the laundries are due to meet with Justice Minister Alan Shatter and junior minister Kathleen Lynch.

Last Friday, Ms Lynch said the question of what would be considered a fair contribution was “debatable” and she did not want to go into it at this early stage.

“The mistake that was made with the industrial schools was that the deal was done in advance of knowing what the final cost would be,” she said.

“That was a major flaw in that process. And we don’t intend to make those same mistakes again.”

Fine Gael TD Joe O’Reilly there was “no avoiding the fact that the religious orders will have to make a contribution to the final fund”.

During last night’s Dáil statements, he said that in many cases, the orders involved have to pay for nursing home fees and the expensive care of their elderly demographic, and that should be taken into account.

“But where there are assets and where there is a capacity to pay, it would be cathartic and it would be part of a recovery process for the religious orders — and a very practical identification with the survivors if they made a financial contribution,” said Mr O’Reilly.

The Cavan-Monaghan TD said it was “not sufficient that they make no input into it”.

The four congregations which were referred to in the McAleese report on the laundries are the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity; the Sisters of Charity, which had assets of €33m in 2009; the Sisters of Mercy, which has a portfolio of assets of €1.8bn; and the Good Shepherd Sisters which, in 2009, had €16.8m worth of financial assets.

via Clerical Whispers.

via Clerical Whispers.