Plans to turn the State’s last Magdalene laundry, which closed 28 years ago, into a national memorial and research centre, alongside a new social housing complex, have been submitted to Dublin City Council.
The Victorian building on Seán McDermott Street is intended as a “site of conscience” to honour residents of all Magdalene laundries, mother and baby and county homes, reformatories, industrial schools and related institutions.
More than 11,000 women and girls were incarcerated in 10 laundries operated by religious congregations from 1922 until the closure of the Seán McDermott Street laundry in 1996.
The National Centre for Research and Remembrance is being developed by the Office of Public Works (OPW) following the transfer of ownership of the Seán McDermott Street site from the city council in July 2022.
In July 2023 the OPW opened public consultation on its proposals for the centre. More than 200 submissions were received which informed the final plans submitted to the council in recent days.
The old convent buildings and chapel will be refurbished to house the main museum and archive, with an adjoining two- to four-storey new building to accommodate an archival repository and storage space at the basement level, and public reading rooms, conservation laboratories, and other technical spaces at upper levels.
A variety of exhibition spaces, lecture space, offices and a reception area will be housed mostly within the existing convent and dormitory building blocks.
A three-to-five-storey educational facility with teaching rooms and study spaces, to support further and higher education, will be built at the southwest of the site facing on to Railway Street, the road parallel to Seán McDermott Street.
Community, family and parenting support facilities will be developed at the 1850s Scots Church and old dispensary buildings. Only the facade of the Scots Church will be preserved, with a new two-storey building behind, while the dispensary will be refurbished and extended. The buildings will provide teaching and play spaces, offices, meeting rooms, workshop space and external play areas.
The existing buildings and new blocks will enclose a “Garden of Reflection”.
Outside the footprint of the laundry site, but as part of the project, a six-storey, older people social housing block with 18 two-bed apartments will be built. The apartments will be accessed through Railway Street.
Subject to planning, construction is expected to start by the end of next year with the project due to be completed by the end of 2027.
The laundry had been operated by the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, which transferred ownership to the city council in the late 1990s.
The council planned to develop the site for housing and in 2006 finalised a public-private partnership (PPP) housing deal with developer Bernard McNamara to build 179 apartments on the site, 20 per cent of which would be reserved for social and affordable housing. The scheme was one of five PPP deals between the council and Mr McNamara that collapsed in 2008, leaving large flat complexes including O’Devaney Gardens derelict, and buildings such as the laundry unused.
In 2018 the council was offered €14.5 million from international hotel group Toyoko Inn for the laundry site. The no-frills chain wanted to build a 350-bed hotel, student accommodation and shops. The proposal also included 60 apartments for social housing, likely to be used for senior citizens, as well as a memorial to the women who were incarcerated in the laundry.
The sale of the laundry had been recommended by the 2017 Mulvey report on the regeneration of the north inner city so the proceeds could be used to fund the economic and social measures. However, councillors voted against the sale for the hotel proposal in late 2018 to facilitate talks on an alternative use for the site.
Councillors subsequently agreed it should be developed as a “multipurpose site of conscience” that would “seek to honour and commemorate the victims and survivors of Ireland’s institutional past”.
