Mary Lou McDonald
Question:167. Deputy Mary Lou McDonald asked the Minister for Justice and Equality for a breakdown by year and by institution of the number of women confined in each of the ten Magdalen laundries. [35429/15]
View answerTuesday, 13 October 2015
Questions (167)
Written answers
As the Deputy will be aware, the report of the Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalen Laundries, the McAleese Report, was published on 5th February 2013 and gave a fully comprehensive answer to the question posed by its terms of reference. The Report is a detailed, carefully researched document running to over 1,000 pages and brought into the public arena a considerable amount of information not previously known. The Report is on my Department's website: www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/MagdalenRpt2013.
The Committee, with the assistance of the Central Statistics Office, conducted a full statistical analysis of all available data on the girls and women who were admitted to and worked in the Magdalen Laundries. The Report indicates that approximately 10,000 women were admitted to the Magdalen Laundries in the period 1922 to 1996 and over 60% of them spent less than a year in these institutions.
In relation to the detailed statistics sought, I would particularly refer the Deputy to Chapter 7 of the Report which provides the sources and methodology used for statistical analysis. I would also refer the Deputy to Chapter 8, which sets out the results, in anonymised form, of the statistical analysis carried out of all available data on the girls and women who were admitted to and worked in the Magdalen Laundries.