Chai Brady
A panel has said a public inquiry should be held into institutions for unmarried mothers in Northern Ireland.
Appointed in late March 2021, the Truth Recovery Panel was scheduled to deliver its findings in six months following close collaboration with victims-survivors of Northern Ireland’s mother and baby homes, Magdalene Laundries and workhouses.
The three experts, Deirdre Mahon, Maeve O’Rourke and Phil Scraton, advised that survivors receive immediate redress payments.
The report outlined serious human rights violations including forced labour and arbitrary detention. An integrated investigation by a non-statutory independent panel, feeding into a statutory inquiry was the main recommendation.
Further recommendations include supporting measures to ensure that victims–survivors can participate in the investigation, including access to records legislation.
Victims–survivors and the panel called on all state, religious and other institutions, agencies, organisations and individuals complicit in the processes of institutionalisation and forced labour, family separation and adoption to act without delay in issuing unqualified apologies and “accept responsibility for harms done; demonstrate sincerity in their apology; and demonstrate the safeguards now in place to ensure there will be no repetition of the inhumanity and suffering to which they contributed”.
A research report published in January found that at least 10,500 women passed through mother and baby homes of which there were eight in the North. More than 3,000 women spent time in a Magdalene Laundry.