Dr. Maeve O'Rourke

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41 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 21 Jul

Dr. Maeve O'Rourke’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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The Last Word with Matt Cooper · 'Testimony' Documentary Explores Magdalene Laundries Abuse · 21 Jul 2026 podcast

Thanks for having us.

Yeah, absolutely.

So you opened by discussing the Magdalene laundries, but as we've just heard from Mary, they were part of a system that also included mother and baby institutions, the boarding out system, the adoption system, the county homes, the residential schools, the psychiatric institutions.

And it's estimated that by 1951, more than 1% of the Irish population was incarcerated in

in one institution or another, and a very small proportion of that being prison.

And then only last week, we had the release of the Truth Recovery Independent Panel report on Northern Ireland's Magdalene and mother and baby institutions.

And we can see a very similar system there.

But not only that, that it was actually cross-border.

So lots of traffic between institutions and also across the border.

So yes, it's

It's an enormous system that really continues to affect, I think, hundreds of thousands of people really today.

Absolutely, especially considering the adoption and the informal adoption system.

And then, of course, all of the intergenerational effects of that.

And the fact that the abuse itself of family separation through these institutions, denial of identity, it continues into the present day.

So it's not even a historic abuse.

I'm sure many of the listeners are aware of what's happening in Bessborough at the moment.

And there are still mothers and siblings of babies who died in their hundreds whose burial place is not known.

So this is not a historic abuse and it absolutely affects huge numbers of people.

Yeah, it needs to be CPO'd by the Irish government.

In fact, in the 1970s, two thirds of the Bessborough estate was CPO'd.

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