Magdalene redress criteria under fire
The Department of Justice is calculating payments for the newly expanded Magdalene redress scheme on the basis that “no child under the age of 12 years of age worked in a Magdalene Laundry” unless it can be proven otherwise.
The claim in an addendum to the scheme comes despite the existence of clear evidence of children as young as nine having been admitted to Magdalene Laundries.
The redress scheme was widened following an Ombudsman report in November 2017, which found the department had wrongly refused some Magdalene laundry survivors access to redress payments and that the scheme had been maladministered by the Department of Justice.
Outlining the scale of lump sum payments planned as part of the widened scheme, the addendum states that these are to be calculated “on the basis that no child under 12 years of age worked in a Magdalene laundry, unless an applicant provides evidence of such work before she reached the age of 12 years”.
The department declined to say on what evidence it was basing this claim but said “it is open to an applicant to provide evidence that she worked in a Magdalene Laundry before she reached the age of 12 years”.
“It does not therefore prohibit work under the age of 12 being included in the calculation of the ‘work’ element of the lump sum payment,” said a statement.
The McAleese Report states that the youngest known entrant to a Magdalene Laundry was nine years old, while the Justice For Magdalenes Research Group also submitted survivor testimony of girls as young as 11 years old being admitted to Magdalene Laundries.
It has also been ascertained that at least one person was admitted to the An Grianán training centre attached to the High Park laundry at the age of 10 years old in the mid-1970s.
The senior research and policy officer at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties and voluntary member of Justice for Magdalenes Research, Maeve O’Rourke, said the claim that no children aged younger than 12 worked in Magdalene Laundries was untrue and could only have come from the religious orders themselves.
The department’s presumption that girls under 12 did not work in Magdalene Laundries must be based on ‘evidence’ coming from the nuns. It is imperative that that evidence be made publicly known, and at the very least put before the survivors for their comment
“Is the department accepting the nuns’ testimony as ‘evidence’? In the Ombudsman’s report he noted that DOJ correspondence to the women is filled with phrases such as ‘the Sisters have confirmed... the Sisters have verified’,” she said.
Ms O’Rourke said it was “time for Magdalene survivors’ testimony to be accepted as ‘evidence’, for once and for all”.
“Charlie Flanagan needs to confirm that this will be the case. It is a tragedy that women have been dragged through five and a half years of further suffering since Enda Kenny’s apology.”
The Department of Justice stressed that each application “will be considered individually on its merits”.
“Any evidence available, whether from the woman herself, others, or the religious congregations will be considered in processing her application,” said a statement
