IRELAND
Times Colonist (Canada)
SHAWN POGATCHNIK / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
JUNE 26, 2013
DUBLIN – Ireland will pay several hundred former residents of Catholic-run Magdalene laundries at least 34.5 million euros ($45 million) to compensate them for their years of unpaid labour and public shame, the government announced Wednesday following a decade-long campaign by former residents of the workhouses.
Justice Minister Alan Shatter apologized to the women — an estimated 770 survivors out of more than 10,000 who lived in the dozen facilities from 1922 to 1996 — that it had taken so long for them to receive compensation. The move marked the latest step in a two-decade effort by Ireland to investigate and redress human rights abuses in its Catholic institutions.
Shatter’s decision came four months after a government-commissioned probe found that women consigned to the laundries were broadly branded “fallen” women, a euphemism for prostitutes. The investigation found that few actually were, while most instead were victims of poverty, homelessness and dysfunctional families in a state lacking the facilities to care for them.
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