Magdalene Survivors May Get Complementary Therapies

RTE News
February 19, 2015

http://www.rte.ie/news/2015/0219/681413-magdalene-women/

Magdalene Survivors Together group has called on the Government to develop a promised Magdalene memorial

Minister for Justice and Equality Frances Fitzgerald has promised to examine the option of funding "complementary therapies" for Magdalene survivors.

In a statement to RTE News, her department explained that the therapies were excluded from a special medical card scheme approved by the Dail yesterday.

It said this was because Minister for Health Leo Varadkar has reservations about providing and funding them through the health service.

The Department of Justice says Ms Fitzgerald, on a personal level, is open to the benefit of such therapies.

She said she would fund them through a separate scheme run on an administrative rather than a statutory basis.

Meanwhile, it has emerged that less than 20% of the deceased residents of a Magdalene Laundry in Dublin are buried in the plot marked by a headstone bearing their names.

The Justice for Magdalene Research group - which published the finding after researching Glasnevin Cemetery's archives - has called on the Commission of Investigation into scandals surrounding Mother and Baby Homes to investigate the burial practices of the religious congregations which ran the High Park Laundry.

The group has called on the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes and Related Matters to investigate the burial practices of the religious congregations which ran the homes.

Three commissioners were appointed to lead the Commission by Minister for Children and Youth Affairs James Reilly.

Judge Yvonne Murphy has been appointed as Commission Chairperson and will be joined by Dr William Duncan, legal expert on child protection and adoption, and historian Professor Mary E Daly.

The commission will look at the operation of 14 institutions as well as some county homes over the period from 1922 to 1998.

Pathways of single women into and out of institutions, conditions and care arrangements and other matters will be reviewed.

Advocates for over 10,000 former inmates of the Magdalene homes have urged Justice Murphy to re-open serious issues surrounding deaths in the laundries which the Government has excluded from the commission's terms of reference because they incarcerated women only.