Commissioner Prof Siobhán Mullally outlined the main recommendations of the IHRC report published today as:
- “that the State now put in place a system of redress” for women who had been in the laundries. This should take into account “lost wages and any pension or social protection benefits” lost;
- it should ”review its interactions with non-State actors, where such private entities exercise any State function or provide any service on behalf of the State...”;
- it must “ensure, in accordance with its international human rights obligtions, that all credible allegations of abuse....are promptly, thoroughly and independently investigated”;
- give consideration “to addressing the gender specific language of Article 41.2 of the Constitution, to address the persistence of stereotypical attitudes towards women and girls.”
(Article 41.2.1 reads “ In paricular, the State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.”
41.2.2 continues “The State shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.)
Prof Mullally noted that the IHRC report also called for “domestic equality legislation to be amended, so that it more closely reflects the State’s international human rights obligations.”
