Republican News · Thursday 4 September 2003

NWCI calls for answers on exhumation of Magdalen women's bodies

The National Women's Council of Ireland (NWCI) has called for an official investigation to be carried out by the Department of Justice into the facts surrounding the exhumation and cremation of the bodies of 155 women from the Magdalen Laundry graveyard in Drumcondra, Dublin, in 1993. Mary Kelly, Chairperson of the NWCI, said: "It is shameful that women so dishonoured in their lives by our society have not been accounted for by name, by certification nor can they now be by their mortal remains in their death".

This investigation must answer a number of serious questions raised by the recent media coverage of this event in 1993, she continued.

• Why did the Department of the Environment issue an exhumation licence for the bodies of women for whom there were no death certificates?
• Why did the Sisters of our Lady of Charity not have death certificates for some of these women's bodies, given the legal obligation for same?
• Were medical officers called to the Magdalen laundry when woman died there? If they were, why were death certificates not issued to vouch for the circumstances of death?
• Was the coroner's office contacted when it became clear that unaccounted for bodies had been exhumed?
• What are the implications for women and men seeking their natural mothers, and for the families of these women, if the facts in this case are not established and recorded?

  The facts of this case must be revealed and the results of this investigation must be made public, says the NWCI If failure to take responsibility is established, those responsible for that failure must be brought to account. "As a society we have a moral responsibility to honour these women in death whom we as a society so dishonoured in life. We cannot do this unless the facts are established. This task is the responsibility of the Department of Justice," stated Kelly.