Battle over Ireland’s last Magdalene laundry

‘A crowd of hundreds filled Dublin’s Sean MacDermott Street in 1979 when Pope John Paul II passed by. Local residents were hopeful he would visit Our Lady of Lourdes Church, which holds the shrine of Matt Talbot, a leading figure in the Irish Church’s temperance movement.
The pope could hardly have failed to notice the dense mass of worshippers, but he did not stop. What he may not have seen was a long, brown-brick Victorian building on the opposite side of the street, one of Ireland’s now notorious Magdalene laundries, where women were incarcerated and forced to work in slave-like conditions.
Out of sight and mind for most of its history, it has now become a focal point in Ireland’s coming to terms with its cruel and brutal treatment of women in the 20th century.
The last operating laundry, only closing in 1996, Sean MacDermott Street is now in the hands of Dublin City Council, which plans to redevelop it for housing. But survivor groups and local politicians want to ensure a memorial is put in place to acknowledge the devastation suffered by women in Ireland’s penal institutions. They are backed by a 2013 government report that established a redress scheme for victims, which also recommended the site house a memorial to “honor and commemorate” the women of the Magdalene laundries.’
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