Micheal Martin’s FF Government brought in an indemnity for the Church. Anything above 127 mn would be handled by the state. They did this to protect the Church, not these women who for the last 20 years they refused to accept as having a legitimate complaint. Nevermind the culture of protection that the party afforded the Church over other horrible deeds.

Good old FF, the ones who got the country into its current mess. I wonder if the current government could pass a regulation to overturn FF’s stupidity? Probably not as all the people are brainwashed by the church.

I wonder if the recent polls have anything to do with it. Support for his party nose diving. Hmmmm.

I was thinking the same thing my self . He is making a meal of it . Do what’s right for the women that had to live and work there . Do it fast and quietly . Not bombarded the media wit it just for a few extra votes . He is not doing it from the heart . Doing it for the polls

Well Kenny and the Blueshirts set up this 2 years ago and called for it before that, just after they had a record vote in place.

Micheal Martin and FF legislated to exclude these women from the redress board, time and time again their Ministers said the state had no responsibility for them.

Most of the women that you speak to have a deep contempt for Micheal Martin.

So who is actually playing the poll game here. FF fought what it saw as harlots for the last 20 years. When public opinion learnt what actually happened to these women and were rightly outraged, they changed tack and called for them to be support.

It is same as how they are pretending to be worried about Bank deals and corruption in politics. It is all an act.

If he did it quietly, people would only focus on the other issues like the mess in the health service, children’s allowance and the endless list of broken promises from this government. A horrible smoke screen to take people’s attention away from his failings.

My dear man, Enda Kenny has been a TD since 1975. Why didn’t he do something sooner. Yes FF have a hell of a lot of blame here but so do previous governments along with parents who also turned a blind eye to what was going on.

Pat.

I’m not saying that there is not massive problems in this state, and i do not agree that he and FG have the right politics to resolve them but I think that he did the right thing here. Accepting repsonsibility for failings of the state is something that needs to be faced up to by the powers that be here and people need to see that power and authority do not equal being right or just.

People and events are complex, many pieces of a jigsaw. This just happens to be a one nice shiny piece that people will point out about Kenny. It was the right thing to do and it was handled properly.

Most of the credit for this inquiry should go to the United Nations who forced Enda Kenny and Labour to set this up 2 years ago. The detainees who were held against their will at the laundries would never have got this only for them.

Damned if he does, damned if he doesnt.
Standard fare on Journal.ie

As I mentioned above. The last FF Government of which Micheal Martin was a senior Minister put in place a legal structure to protect the church from its responsibilities. Naturally he and they will ignore this fact, complain about the state paying and still go to the Bishop’s House for a pat on the head and a biscuit.

Well maybe this government should change this legal structure.

They certainly should Pat.

Don’t forget these Enda :

Psychiatrist Lane O’Kelly justice talks abandoned

Sunday Times Justine McCarthy Published: 20 January 2013
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/ireland/article1198071.ece

PLANS for restorative justice talks with four women who were sexually abused by their psychiatrist have been abandoned because the Brothers of Charity, his employers, have refused to accept responsibility.

The talks were requested by four women who claim they were sexually assaulted by Dr Denis Lane O’Kelly at Belmont Park hospital in Waterford.

A professional facilitator was approved by both sides and the religious order had agreed to pay his fee before the process ground to a halt.

The women now say they want financial compensation from the order.

Lane O’Kelly died in 2002, two weeks before he was due to stand trial on multiple charges of indecently assaulting patients, arising from a garda investigation begun in 1994.

Civil actions previously taken against him by some of his former patients were dismissed in the High Court on the grounds that too much time had elapsed since the alleged assaults.

Meredith
This is a separate matter to the incarceration of women against their will and their misuse as slave labour over many years. Any other extraneous matters should be dealt with by the appropriate Authorities and should not impinge on this wonderful occasion for the Magdalene survivors.

You’ll have to ask Micheal Martin, Willie o’Dea, Eamon o’Cuiv why the FF cabinet that they were members of put an upper limit of 127mn on the amount that the Church would pay. The Taxpayer will have to pay to protect the assets of those that treated these women like animals.

Well said.

It didn’t go deeper than the church IMHO. The church’s brainwashing meant that people were disempowered. Remember, he who listens to confession knows the secrets of society and can use those secrets to blackmail and control.

@ Smiley. I disagree with you there. Plenty of people ignored the church and chose to keep their innocent grandchildren at home but many many heartless and cruel parents didn’t do so. Parents certainly in my opinion have an awful lot to answer for.

While the Irish middle classes, who enjoyed sharing in many ways the power of ‘the church’ , turned a blind eye and offered tacit, sanctimonious support, the actual perpetrators were the religious orders. They were also the beneficiaries (and in more ways than just money earned).

This was part of the overall culture of full spectrum dominance (so to speak) of Irish society.

The Magdalene laundries were just one component. What about children abducted from perfectly good families (by today’s standards) for example, and used as guinea pigs for drug testing – a drug testing payed for by drug companies – to the Catholic church?

It is not asking these questions that Irish society is guilty of, and not having the courage to take a stand. How many of us for example, demanded of school principles that our children would not be indoctrinated by the same orgainization that committed these crimes? Our taxes and contributions payed for all of our schools; and for virtually all the other real estate and assets too frequently described as belonging to the Catholic church.

How many of us ‘guilty’ taxpayers have off-shore accounts or intricately obfuscated investment portfolios?

Gerry, it would have been nice to have taken a stand. I’m sure those in nazi Germany would have liked to, also. The problem is, when a small group of people have such immense power over society, as the church did, it is nigh on impossible to take a stand. Remember, the church threatened excommunication along with its attendant burning in hell forever.

In the 90s Smiley, I took this stand. It was very difficult for me and the children, but i feel it was the right thing to have done. Still today in 2013 there are many, many parents who comment as we have here but who continue to turn a blind eye. Why?

Gerry, it’s that brainwashing thing. The Jesuits said: give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man. ‘Nuff said.

Parents were controlled by the parish priest. Remember the stigma for not attending mass? Even today, money is put in numbered envelopes in the collection plate so the PP knows who gave what.

RTE is all about deference to authority.

How could people down thumb that. Google what was one of the worst atrocities. One thing DublinJack there was atrocities and savagery aplenty in the Protestant Schools here as well, incuding death and abuse.

It is a deference to power that is the problem in this state. A people that were so controlled and dominated, so crapped down on from all sides that there are many psychologically destroyed people in this country.

Don’t feed the troll

Anthony. You are one sick piece of you know what.. Wanna know what the big deal is?
These hellholes continued to operate until 1996, a product of the times eh? More like a product of the sexist, elitist claptrap that you seem so keen to defend – Catholicism, for your numerous roles in human rights abuses, please take a bow..

Chill out shanti om, and start using your real name ! As always with you , you are oblivious or ignorant of the evidence . No sex abuse ,no violence took place there . It was a late 19 th century response to social problems which went on too long . It was inappropriate in the same way that workhouses were an inappropriate way of dealing with poverty , destitution or old age and they lasted til 1948! I also worked in psychiatric institutions in the UK in the 1970s and we had old women in wards who had been there for over 60 years for bearing a child out of wedlock . They weren’t mentally ill but were institutionalised and couldn’t live outside in their own . We had children who were misdiagnosed with mental illness before the First World War and they still lived there in long stay wards in the 1976. We were still giving aversion therapy to gay men in 1970s mental Heath units and lobotomies were still being carried out and electric shock treatment for depression . The treatment that some patients received was terrible and inhumane and it appalls me to think of the suffering we imposed on vulnerable people . I later worked in the criminal justice system and we were still putting 14 years old children in adult prisons in 1986 ! They were terrified and their weeping was dreadful to see . Ireland’s laundry system was no different . Yes it was wrong but to start to judge them by our more enlightened standard is understandable but futile .

Why was society so judgemental of having children out of wedlock? Why was society so judgemental of those who didn’t fit a certain set of values? Who was pushing those values?

You suggested that prisoners should be complaining about their treatment – but these women were not criminals. Just the victims of a supposedly moral standard. There is a vast difference. These women did not do anything wrong, what was done to them was wrong, by anyone’s standards.

Of course the women did nothing wrong but they were considered to have transgressed the cultural norms at that time and consequently they were sent to laundries or psychiatric institutions etc.History is littered with people of all kinds who were treated badly because they dared to be different or could not help being different . Look at the way we have treated people with learning disabilities and it has only changed for the better recently . Yes compensate the women and strive for a better future but stop the constant moaning . It happened everywhere . It is not an exclusively Irish or catholic thing !