Magdalene pension claim supported by ‘ample evidence’

Published: Sunday, July 03, 2011

THERE IS already "ample evidence" of the State's involvement in the Magdalene laundries for these women to at least receive pensions for the years of unpaid work they carried out, a meeting of the Irish Women Survivors Support Network in London heard at the weekend.

Maeve O'Rourke, a lawyer who represented the Justice for Magdalenes group at a recent hearing in Geneva of the United Nations Committee Against Torture, said that, at the very least, time the women worked unpaid should count towards their pensions.

She said the interdepartmental committee set up by the Government to investigate the laundries should also take into account the "unofficial ways in which the State was involved", for example the return of women to the laundries by the Garda. Aside from evidence that past governments and their agencies used the laundries, there "was a duty on the State to protect every single one of those women and girls", she said.

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