We must shed light on a dark past

By Joanne O’ Riordan
Irish Examiner
June 16, 2014

http://www.irishexaminer.com/analysis/we-must-shed-light-on-a-dark-past-272142.html

OVER the past few weeks we have all been flabbergasted by the Tuam Mother and Child Home controversy.

It has shed some light on what appears to be a dark past that not only treated women as second class citizens but allowed their children to suffer and die in circumstances that are not imaginable in today’s society.

It would appear that mother and baby homes are not the only places that have mass graves, which begs the question as to whether or not other homes, such as the Magdalene laundries and industrial schools, will be included.

In 1993 a mass exhumation was carried out at one of the biggest Magdalene Laundries in Dublin known as High Park, run by The Sisters of Our Lady of Charity. The discovery of over 155 bodies led to a public outcry, but 21 years on we still don’t know who these women were and how they die

It would appear that the women exhumed are not the women they had permission to exhume, and out of the 155 names listed on the licence only 103 match that licence.

It is estimated that over 1000 Magdalene women are buried in Mass graves throughout Ireland in Cork, Limerick, Dublin, Galway, Waterford and Wexford.

I think it’s crucial that the Minister for Justice comes out and gives a guarantee that the Magdalene Laundries will be included in any statutory inquiry that looks at establishing the facts around mass graves and mother and baby homes.

It is shocking to think that all this time the identity of these women still remains unknown.

In Ireland we seem to have a habit of half-heartedly doing something. This is an opportunity to face head on our past and finally lay to rest the ongoing misery that surrounds these institutions. We need to allow these mothers and children move on with their lives safe in the knowledge that what happened shouldn’t have happened and it will never happen again.

The right thing to do here is exhume all the bodies in mother and baby homes, industrial schools & Magdalene Laundries. We need to set aside a dedicated plot of land and rebury these people side by side. We need to afford them the same right in death as we should have in life. We need to ensure that each of these graves has an individual head stone, name and date of when the person lived and died. This is the right thing to do!

We need to free their souls and their spirit of this terrible injustice because, as I said before, each life is precious.