‘Serious doubt’ at McAleese report finding

By Conall ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner
July 14, 2014

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/serious-doubt-at-mcaleese-report-finding-275311.html

New research has cast "serious doubt" on one of the key findings of the McAleese report concerning the length of time women spent in Magdalene laundries.

The research, undertaken as part of the Justice For Magdalenes Research (JFM Research) Names Project, comes as the group reiterated its call for Magdalene laundries to be included in the Mother and Baby Home Commission of Investigation.

According to the McAleese Report, 61% of known entries spent less than a year in Ireland’s 10 Magdalene institutions.

However, JFMR say their research based on comparisons between Magdalene grave records and electoral registers, “cast serious doubt” on this assertion.

The research found that 63.43% of the women who appear on the electoral register for the High Park laundry from 1954-55 also appear on the laundry’s headstones at Glasnevin Cemetery — indicating that they spent a minimum of nine years confined there. Some 61.43% of the women from 1955-56 were there for a minimum of eight years.

The electoral registers for the Donnybrook laundry reveal similar results, with 63.11% in 1954-55 incarcerated for a minimum of nine years and 67.88% of those in 1955-56 incarcerated for a minimum of eight years.

In Donnybrook’s case, the available electoral registers for 1954-64 show that over half of these women are buried in the graveyard at the old laundry site, while almost 30% of the women in High Park during the same timeframe are buried in Glasnevin Cemetery.

Writing in today’s Irish Examiner, Claire McGettrick, co-founder of JFM Research and co-ordinator of the Magdalene Names Project, said the McAleese report failed victims and their families.

“The IDC also went well beyond its mandate and produced a report offering an inaccurate and incomplete representation of the experiences of those who were incarcerated against their will. The McAleese Report utterly failed the Magdalene women, both living and dead, and their families,” she writes.

Last May, the UN Committee Against Torture, which forced the Government to investigate the Magdalene laundries, criticised the McAleese report as “incomplete” and lacking “many elements of a prompt, independent, and thorough investigation.

Ms McGettrick said it raised concerns around deaths in Magdalene laundries with the McAleese Committee but these were “ignored” along with the issue of unmarked Magdalene graves dotted around the country. Instead the McAleese report “unquestionably reflects the information provided by the religious orders, and only that information.”