Stop the Sale of the Sean McDermott Street Magdalene Laundry site.

Preserve it as a Site of Conscience. Keep it standing for Truth, Justice and Love.

Dublin City Council is planning to sell the 2-acre Magdalene Laundry site on Sean McDermott Street in Dublin to a Japanese hotel chain for €14 million.

The elected Dublin City Councillors have the power to stop the sale. They will vote on a motion to stop the Council’s plan on Monday 3rd September.

Add your voice to the petition.

Tell the Councillors that the Sean McDermott Street Magdalene site must be preserved as a national centre for commemoration and education.

The institutional and clerical abuses that have caused pain and destruction to so many people and families in Ireland must be acknowledged. We must never forget, and we must never allow them to happen again.

This is the new Ireland.

We can and must remember.

We must honour survivors when they say:

I’d like them to acknowledge what has happened and accept what has happened - instead of saying, ‘oh yes I’m sorry,’ but no meaning behind it - and make sure it never ever, ever happens again.
(Link to http://jfmresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/JFMR-report-to-CAT-for-the-session-2017-Main-Report.pdf )

We must respect the survivors who tell us:

I just would like it to be known. I would like it to go into the history books and I would like...do you know, the younger generation of today including my own grandchildren to know that that’s the way it was long ago. It wasn’t the perpetrator that went in, that got into trouble, it was the victim. You know, you’d have had to have been a girl, like, for that to happen. http://jfmresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/JFMR-report-to-CAT-for-the-session-2017-Main-Report.pdf )

We must hold the Taoiseach to what he told the Pope last weekend, and demand action, not just brave words. As Leo Varadkar said on Saturday:
the failures of both Church and State and wider society created a bitter and broken heritage for so many, leaving a legacy of pain and suffering.
...It is a history of sorrow and shame.
...Wounds are still open and there is much to be done to bring about justice and truth and healing for victims and survivors.
DCC Councillors will shortly vote on the following motion:
“ Following the repeated recommendations of the United Nations Committee Against Torture (UNCAT) that the Irish State should undertake a thorough and impartial investigation into ill-treatment of girls and women at the Magdalene Laundries, promote greater access to archival information regarding the Magdalene Laundries and fully implement the outstanding recommendations of Mr Justice Quirke, including services for survivors and memorialisation, the elected members of Dublin City Council (DCC) consider it entirely inappropriate that DCC is currently offering the Magdalene Laundry site at Sean McDermott Street for sale to private developers. The elected members of DCC are also concerned that, despite it being the first recommendation of Mr Justice Ryan's Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, a memorial to those abused in residential schools has never been created.

We hereby request a halt to the sale of the Magdalene Laundry site at Sean McDermott Street. We welcome the creation of the Lord Mayor's Commission and look forward to receiving its recommendations regarding the appropriate use of the site.”