The last remaining Magdalene laundry, fully intact with all the industrial heritage items from woven baskets, to religious iconography, wash basins, ledgers, machinery is currently up for sale, by a private owner.   

This is a unique opportunity to protect and preserve a hidden past, a dark secret that only came to light through recent public inquiry, but is still ongoing.  This is not about our historic past, it is about our present now, and a future understanding of ourselves and our society.  

It would be ethically wrong and morally reprehensible and akin to an act of cultural and heritage vandalism to allow this entire site and its contents to be destroyed.  It must be preserved and given its rightful place in Ireland's social, political and religious history as well as its labour and industrial history. Paramount to all of that is the legacy of the gulags that formed the built architecture of sites of coercive confinement - the Magdalene laundries, Mother and Baby homes, psychiatric compounds such as Grangegorman, St Lomans, Ballinasloe, Portrane, as well as the Industrial schools, detention centres and reform schools. 

This site at Donnybrook, totally intact, has the essence to transform those who see it and witness it and enlighten them into what happened and what befell the many women and young girls who passed through its doors.  

We should not be afraid to own this past. 

Please sign this petition calling on the Government and relevant State bodies to intervene to retain this building and its contents in its entirety for the generations to come. 

https://soundcloud.com/rte-radio-1/todaysor-donnybrook-magdalene-laundry

This is about civil society engaging in what is right and healthy. It is a norm in other countries and jurisdictions to protect and preserve intact such important sites.  This is part also of a global history that is connected to religious abuses and infringement on human rights that were imported and exported by Irish congregations of religious all over the world.  At present Canada, Australia, North America, Africa, Europe are carrying out major investigations into such institutions.  It would be appropriate and a beginning of a process of reconciliation for such a site to be retained as it would form a part of witness and testimony.  It would also act as vital factual evidence  where there is denial and disbelief.