Search Results for 'Magdalene asylum'

Women who spent time in the Galway Magdalene Laundry have been invited to meet with The Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy, who ran the institution.

There are no reliable figures for the numbers of women sent to the Magdalene Laundry in Galway as the McAleese Report reveals blank or missing records, but strong hints it was one of the few in the State operating on an economic surplus.

The half-hearted effort by the Government to offer justice to the women who were incarcerated involuntarily between 1922 and 1996 (yes, that recently) has been welcomed by the survivor advocacy group Justice for Magdalenes this week, although they are not entirely satisfied with the effort.

Sinn Féin councillor Thérèse Ruane has given a broad welcome to the proposed interdepartmental group which will inquire into the State involvement in the running of Magdalene Laundries. However Cllr Ruane is disappointed that the State falls short of the recommendations of the UN Committee against Torture. She is calling for an immediate formal State apology.

In the wake of the Government’s decision to launch a limited investigation into the treatment of women and girls in the Magdalene laundries, Galway city councillor Padraig Conneely has welcomed the move, calling for a “prompt and speedy resolution” to be found.

Galway City Council decided this past week to remove a statue memorializing the women who lived, worked and, in some cases, died at the Sisters of Mercy Magdalene laundry in the city. Dedicated in March 2009, the Mick Wilkins statue was commissioned by the same city councilors who now seek to remove it. It is located at the corner of Forster Street and Bothár Breandan O Eithir, standing in full public view close to where the laundry institution once stood.

Egg Shells and Broken Dreams, the new novel by Galway born author John Rodgers, chronicles the lives of people in rural Ireland in the 1950s and 1960s.

A statue in remembrance of the women who had to endure life in the Magdalen Laundry in Galway will be unveiled the weekend.

ATHENRY’S ECLIPSE Theatre Company come to the Town Hall next week with their debut production which, appropriately enough, is a staging of Patricia Burke Brogan’s powerful play about the Magdalene laundries, Eclipsed.