Dublin City Council has a responsibility and a duty to halt this sale and not discard this building and all the cultural and personal history it symbolises.
“The sale of the Laundry would be an act of cultural vandalism that is wrong. The Sean McDermott St Magdalene Laundry should be turned into a centre to remember, honour and memorialise those who were incarcerated in laundries and other institutions.”
Over 9,000 people sign petition to stop Dublin City Council selling off Magdalene Laundry site
More than 9,200 people have signed a petition to Dublin City Councillors calling on them to support a motion at their meeting this afternoon (Monday, 3rd Sept) to halt the sale by Dublin City Council of the last Magdalene Laundry in public ownership to a hotel chain.
Social Democrats Councillor Gary Gannon, who has tabled the motion to today’s City Council meeting, said:
“The sale of the Laundry would be an act of cultural vandalism that is wrong. Dublin City Council has a responsibility and a duty to halt this sale and not discard this building and all the cultural and personal history it symbolises.”
“We spent long enough brushing issues we didn’t like under the carpet – we cannot continue to do that. We cannot learn from our history without facing up to our past, to abuses which society tolerated, and to abuses which continue to impact on those who were institutionalised in laundries, in industrial schools, and those who continue to live with the impact of clerical sexual abuse.”
“Report after report, many of the survivors of the laundries, and huge numbers of the public are calling for the Sean McDermott St Magdalene Laundry to be turned into a centre to remember, honour and memorialise those who were incarcerated in laundries and other institutions”
“The Petition has been sent to all councillors, and I hope all councillors will support today’s motion to halt the sale.”
ENDS
3rd September
Editors Notes
1. An uplift petition to Dublin City Councillors to stop the sale currently has 8,000 signatures. https://my.uplift.ie/