'Ireland’s Church/State abuses and the question of transitional justice' with Maeve O’Rourke

Dr Maeve O'Rourke, barrister and lecturer in human rights law, joined the IOI series to discuss her work on institutional abuse in the 20th century, particularly the Magdalene Laundries and Mother and Baby Homes, survivor-led efforts for justice, recent state responses to abuses in Northern Ireland and the Republic, and the question of what human rights-based 'transitional justice' might mean.

Executive summary

Dr Maeve O’Rourke, barrister and lecturer in human rights law, joined the IOI series to discuss her work on 20th century institutional abuse on the island of Ireland. Maeve highlighted the specific gendered nature of institutional abuse in the Magdalene Laundries and the Mother and Baby Homes as well as the successes and failures of recent government inquiries into state involvement in these institutions.

• Maeve set out the gendered aspect of what Professor Jim Smith dubs  the Republic of Ireland’s ‘architecture of containment’, detailing how women were often incarcerated indefinitely, forced to participate in unpaid labour, and coerced or forced into the adoption of their children. Whilst the institutions were established and run by religious orders, they were inspected, regulated, and funded by the state. In the case of the Magdalene Laundries, the Irish State assisted in securing them commercial contracts.   
• Maeve highlighted that although some women have benefitted from redress schemes, many women have been let down by the Irish Government’s  response with some being denied fair procedure, many having their testimony ignored or dismissed, and with the ongoing denial of access to records and documents. Although the Irish Government has now committed to a national site of conscience and conversation  had begun on memorialisation, it is crucial that the societal conversation about institutional abuse continues, promoting a culture of truth-telling  which can contribute to conversations about other societal inequalities and injustices today. 
• Maeve also set out how commissions and inquiries often serve a political purpose and therefore do not adequately centre survivors and their needs within the process. In the Republic of Ireland, there has been a practice of establishing such investigations outside of ordinary judicial mechanisms  and blocking victims from accessing alternative methods of legal recourse. 
• Maeve made several recommendations relating to institutional abuse which could better support survivors including in relation to the state providing improved access to documents, the provision of legal assistance before and during government inquiries, and by focusing on bringing an end to ongoing abuses such as family separation. 
• It was noted that the island of Ireland is not unique in terms of historical institutional abuse; many European countries had Magdalene Laundries and Mother and Baby Homes. The ‘carceral edge’ it developed in the twentieth century was, however, as was the practice of detaining women beyond a six-month period after giving birth. Lawyers in countries including the Netherlands, Australia, and the United States have begun work similar to Maeve’s, and there is great potential for historical research into the global connections between such institutions and such practices. 

About the speaker

Dr Maeve O’Rourke is a Lecturer at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, University of Galway. She founded and directs the ICHR's Human Rights Law Clinic. Maeve is also a barrister at 33 Bedford Row, named UK Family Law Pro Bono Lawyer of the Year, 2013. She is a member of the Justice for Magdalenes Research group and co-director of the Clann Project. She has long advocated on behalf of survivors of Ireland's historical institutional and forced family separation system. She was appointed by the Northern Ireland Executive in 2021 to design in consultation with survivors the framework for a state investigation (now underway) into Northern Ireland's Magdalene, Mother and Baby, and Workhouse Institutions. She has co-authored and co-edited several books on transitional justice in Ireland. Her monograph Human Rights and the Care of Older People is forthcoming with Oxford University Press. She is former Senior Research and Policy Officer for the Irish Council for Civil Liberties.

About the discussant

Eugenio Biagini is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Cambridge and Fellow at Sidney Sussex College. His research focuses on the social, economic and political history of democracy, with a primary focus on Ireland.  He has recently published (with Daniel Mulhall), The Shaping of Modern Ireland (Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 2016) and edited (with Mary Daly) The Cambridge Social History of Ireland since 1740 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2017). His current research focuses on the history of religious and ethnic minorities in twentieth-century Ireland, in a comparative perspective. He focuses on the challenge of nation building, the redefinition of ‘public interest’, civil liberties and ‘the constitution’ in deeply divided societies. 

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What was said?

Dr Maeve O’Rourke was preparing to start her master’s in human rights at Harvard when the report for the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse was released in May 2009, which had examined 42,000 children who had lived in industrial and reformatory schools and orphanages run by 18 religious orders across the Republic of Ireland but which were regulated, inspected, and funded by the Irish State.  Children were committed to such institutions through the court system. Having always considered a career in human rights to be one largely based in the international sphere, Maeve was struck by the realisation that there were major human rights issues to study and expose closer to home in Ireland. At Harvard, under the supervision or Professor Kathy McKinnon, Maeve began looking into the gendered aspect of institutional abuses - a factor the Commission’s report had ignored entirely – and became involved with the Justice for Magdalenes (JFM) organisation. Established in 2003, JFM advocates on behalf of survivors of the Magdalene Laundries and campaigned for a State apology,  which was made in 2013, and, crucially, financial redress for survivors.   

The Magdalene Laundries were among institutions that make up what Professor Jim Smith refers to as Ireland’s ‘architecture of containment’. It is estimated that by 1951, 1% of Ireland’s population was incarcerated in State institutions such as the Magdalene Laundries, Mother and Baby Homes, and reformatory schools. Survivors of such institutions have told of the immense abuse they suffered during their incarceration. There is a particular gendered aspect to the Laundries and Mother and Baby Homes where so-called ‘fallen’ women and girls were removed from society, indefinitely incarcerated, subjected to forced labour, and in many cases experiencing forced separation from their children. Following the 2009 report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, in 2010 the Irish Human Rights Commission called for the establishment of an inquiry into the Magdalene Laundries which began in 2011. In 2013, Taoiseach Enda Kenny delivered an apology from the state to survivors. In 2015 a Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes was established following the groundbreaking work of Catherine Corless which revealed a mass grave of babies in a disused septic tank in a former Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Co. Galway.  

Despite the putative positive outcomes of the various commission of investigations and inquiries, Maeve highlighted how many of these have in fact contributed to the suffering of survivors. The Mother and Baby Homes Commission made findings that women had consented to the adoption of their children, despite women feeling they had not consented. It  also made findings that no harm had been caused from the administration of vaccine trials withing these institutions, in direct contradiction to testimony delivered by survivors. Women were repeatedly denied fair procedure, with individuals involved in the institutions being granted permission to see drafts of the report, while survivors were denied access. Women who had asked for documents that the State possessed, regarding the location of burials for example, were denied access to records. Survivors’ testimony relating to matters such as the length of their incarceration was not treated as evidence by successive inquiries.  One redress scheme explicitly denied redress to women who were separated from their children before they turned six-months old. At the 2015 Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes, survivors were not provided with legal assistance, while individuals accused of involvement in the administration of the institutions were, and survivors were not provided with transcripts of their own testimony after delivering it. This is not to say that no women have benefitted from the process - some have done – but many were denied fair process and were let down by the State once again. It has taken Maeve, the legal experts that have assisted in her research, other researchers and campaigners, and survivors themselves to achieve something approaching justice. This has involved reference to the European Convention on Human Rights and to the UN Committee on Torture. In Maeve’s opinion, the inquiries seemed at many points to be aimed at placating the general public than for achieving justice for the survivors themselves.

Furthermore, Maeve argued that some of these procedures had – by design or not – shut down other avenues of legal recourse for survivors. Many of the inquiries and commissions were underpinned by legislation that prevents evidence from being used for criminal proceedings. For Maeve, this is contrary to the very notion of human-rights based reparations which should operate through democratic institutions and justice mechanisms. She further argued that the Legacy Act recently passed by the Conservative Government in the UK is a parallel example of this, whereby victims of human rights abuses in which the state is involved are syphoned off into ‘special’ investigations, rather than having ordinary legal mechanisms prevail. 

To what extent, Dr Barry Colfer (IOI co-convenor and Research Fellow in Politics, St Edmund’s College) asked, was the island of Ireland unique in terms of such historical institutional abuse, since religious orders were not just all-island organisations but global entities? Neither Magdalane Laundries nor Mother and Baby Homes were a unique Irish phenomenon, Maeve explained, and they existed all over Europe. Institutions in England have also been investigated in at least one parliamentary human rights report. What made them different on the island of Ireland was the practice of keeping women incarcerated beyond six months after they’d given birth. This is the reason that the Mother and Baby Home Commission didn’t consider women to be abused before the six-month point. There is also an argument that the level of state involvement and particular ‘carceral edge’ it developed in the Republic in the 20th century was part of the nation-building project following independence from the UK in 1921. Women who weren’t in keeping with the traditional family model and gender roles inscribed in the 1937 Irish Constitution were removed from society through incarceration in these institutions.  Maeve has been contacted by lawyers researching Magdalene Laundries and Mother and Baby Homes in the Netherlands, Australia, and the USA. Part of the future work of historians and legal scholars must be to explore the broader nature of this abuse, for example by examining the role of the Church as a global institution. 

Maeve’s work in this field has now extended to Northern Ireland, where she has been commissioned by the Northern Ireland Executive to work with survivors of similar institutions and make recommendations for an investigation into Magdalene Laundries and Mother and Baby Homes north of the border. Maeve has worked to make it a requirement of the process that survivors’ needs are prioritised from the start, particularly in relation to situations of ongoing family separation. In 2021, survivors in the Republic of the Laundries and Mother and Baby Homes finally met to begin discussing what they would like to see in terms of memorialisation and the Irish Government has committed to building a national site of conscience  in the former Magdalene Laundry on Sean McDermott Street in Dublin which will house archival records, social housing, and a museum.