The Taoiseach’s stopped short of issuing a full apology to the women detained in Magdalen laundries.
Enda Kenny says he’s sorry that the stigma of being in the laundries was not removed, sorry that people lived in the environment and sorry that it took until July 2011 to instigate the McAleese committee report.
That report – just now published – found clear evidence of state involvement in the religious-run work houses – but says there was a legal basis for the state’s actions.
Senator McAleese’s report finds that more than a quarter of 10-thousand women who entered the laundries were referred there by the State.
The Taoiseach says people need to read the report, which he says paints a picture of a harsh, uncompromising and authoritarian Ireland from the 1920s to the 1950s.
