Memory Laundering

[jack colleton]

From top: The former ‘Gloucester Street’ Magdalene Laundry, Sean McDermott Street, Dublin 1; the plans for a 351-bed hotel on the site by  Japanese hotel chain Toyoko Inn; Gary Gannon
“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” – George Orwell.
Dublin City Council has identified a preferred bidder for the Sean McDermott Street site that contains the last Magdalene Laundry to cease its operations, and the only former religious controlled laundry of its type that is currently in the possession of the State.

Last Tuesday, I was invited along with the seven other councillors who were elected to the North Inner City ward of Dublin City Council for an update on the proposed sale of the “Sean McDermott Convent Site”.
As I have been quite vocal about the importance of preserving this site as a centre of commemoration and remembrance to the victims and the survivors of not only this, but all religious controlled institutions of incarceration that have existed in this State since our foundation, I attended this meeting with some apprehension for what I was to be presented with.
I had anticipated being disappointed by any potential sale of a site of such enormous social and cultural importance to the shared memory of the Irish people, but in the week that has followed, my emotions upon remembering that meeting have been a heavy assortment of anger, sadness, and disbelief that such disregard could be shown to the suffering that occurred to Irish women on this site.
Dublin City Council’s preferred bidder for the site is the Japanese Hotel chain, Toyoko Inn. It is their intention to build a 351 bed hotel on this site.
They operate a type of no-frills business hotel model and have a reputation for almost exclusively hiring women with over 95% of their workforce being exclusively female. In 2015, the Toyoko Inn group purchased the Kinsealy Estate of former Taoiseach Charles Haughey.
In reporting on that sale, the Journal.ie quoted from an English language flyer for the hotel group which referred to the benefits of the unusual hiring practice:
“Beginning with the manager, the majority of our front desk and housekeeping staff are women,” it said. “Their dedicated efforts ensure a pleasant and comfortable stay for all our guests.”
I am very much open to being informed otherwise but it seems to be a cruel joke that given what occurred at this site for over one hundred years, where impoverished women were forced to clean the dirty bed-sheets of the major hotels in the city to generate huge profits for the religious institutions, that very shortly on this same site there will once again be people of low-income being paid relatively very little to clean and serve the needs of others in order to generate enormous wealth for a foreign institution.
The hotel group also intend to build a 140 bed student residence on the site. I have no problem at all with the emergence of student accommodation around the city but given that they come with no Part V conditions nor rent control for the students trying to access them, they are merely being used as means to exploit wealthier international students in their current form.
The proposal also includes ten residential units. I’ll repeat that because when I first heard it I couldn’t quite grasp what was being said to me. The proposal includes the plans for ten residential units. Ten. Four of which will be social units and six that will be sold privately.
That is ten units in the middle of the worst housing crisis in the history of the State in which people are dying on our streets and over 3000 homeless children are being crammed into family hubs and single room hotel accommodation.
There will be a cultural amenity on the site; a type of concert hall that will be built in what was previously the Church in the convent quarters of the former Magdalene Laundry. In normal circumstances I would be thrilled by such a development but it isn’t anticipated that this would be a public amenity but rather owned and operated by the purchaser.
This is of course their right as owners but this was once a place of communal gathering for the local community, and agnostic as I may be, I must admit that this particular church was one of beauty.
There are some retail units also planned and the welcome addition of a small community space for a youth drug rehabilitation project that currently operates out of the laundry. But what is not in the plans, is any reference at all to a memorial that was promised to the surviving women of the Magdalene Laundries.
This memorial to the victims was a recommendation made by Justice Quirke in 2013 and is something that many of the survivors and their representative groups hold very dear. I and other Councillors at this meeting did enquire as to the location of the memorial and it was suggested that it would be decided after the sale by the new owners of the site in consultation with DCC.
Quite literally, the memorial to the women incarcerated at this laundry and others will be an after-thought. That is both reprehensible and unforgivable.
To me, the sale of this former Magdalene laundry site represents the final stage of the cover up of abuse, coercion and control of women in this country. Only a fortnight after an ombudsman report found that many survivors were wrongfully denied redress, the deliberate attempts to forget and to airbrush our shameful past is almost complete.
You can stop this sale though. The final decision to dispose of council land is a reserved function of elected members to Dublin City Council.
I strongly encourage you to contact your local Councillors and inform them not to accept neither this sale, nor any other disposal of this property that doesn’t contain a suitable memorial that honours and commemorates the Magdalene women both past and present.
And most importantly, a memorial that is designed in consultation with the survivors themselves and the various different representative groups who have fought alongside them for many years.
Gary Gannon is a Social Democrats Councillor on Dublin City Counicil for Dublin’s North Inner City.  Follow Gary on Twitter: @1garygannon

http://www.broadsheet.ie/2017/12/06/memory-laundering/

[Geraldine Jackson]

The Irish Slaves who were locked up and  enslaved in these Laundry,s  by the Corrupt State and Church without any wages for many years many of their Babies were also stolen from them and  Sold by the State and Church to Rich Foreigners The Church ,State or Council do not Own  These Buildings they were  bought with Blood Sweat ,Tears ,Loss, and terrible suffering of thousands of Irish Women. The Council have No right to sell it as it never was paid for by them they are Immoral  Corrupt Criminals , The same goes for former  Industrial Schools which were Child Slave Camps where Irish Children were Stolen Locked up abused Starved Tortured Neglected .treated as Total Slaves , We know the Politicians  are and have been in Bed with the Church both have  been busy covering up the Brutality selling off the Buildings quickly so there is no trace of the Dark Brutal past Take Goldenbridge A Total House of Fear run by Sadistic Brides of Satan who destroyed so many Children's lives It was all Ethnic Cleansing of Irish people the Church already had replacement of their foreign Choice of friend for Ireland . It seems to have a Polish Prime Minister and American Italian Minister for Children while no one ask's What happened to all those Thousands of Irish Children and The young Irish Women they are Blanked wiped out of History , The Inhumanity carried out against children in Artane Industrial is beyond words so shocking it Pains and makes one Sick even trying to find words to match the Brutal Torture ,Rapes, Starvation and even more Shocking that is Unprintable that went on there by so Called Christian Brothers who were Dancing and Wanking with the DEVIL where they all are Now waiting for all the rest Child abusers to Join Them. 

[jack colleton]

wow. sounds like a fine book!

[Geraldine Jackson]

some Ex Industrial Survivors were especially Chosen to run so called services and given offices and funding The Church and State knew this would cause division by separating Survivors people making the chosen think they are special above the rest of survivors ,Those who braved it  to travel back to Ireland after many years  Never told a Soul about their childhoods wanted to find their Roots ,any Family or any connection at all found they were been BULLIED many were chased back out of Ireland By Bullies in fact they were doing the Work for the Corrupt State and Church for these Bullied Survivors will never go back to Ireland Their Own Country, <Bullied Out Of It.  There never was any Help what did they all do with the funding Just like the Irish Centres in the UK>?????? what have they done for the Survivors> NOTHING. 

[jack colleton]

phoar.  on it as always Geraldine!

[Elizabeth Nicholas]

Can we all sign a petition against this hotel being built,   the maternity hospital was stopped, so come on lets stop this unnecessary building going up.  Not sure how to start this petition,  so can someone help to get it off the ground.

Good luck everyone, and a very happy Christmas to you all.