Like previous speakers, on behalf of the Labour Party group, I wish former Senator Martin McAleese all the best in his future career. I have never had many dealings with him, but he struck me as being an intelligent and dignified man who brought an enormous presence to any project in which he has taken part. I wish we had seen more of him in the House. I have every confidence the Taoiseach will appoint a person of equal ability to fill his place. Aside from his work in bringing the Orange Order before the House, it is well to acknowledge that he participated in a number of debates. Had he spent more time in the Chamber he might have caused even greater debate in the future. I am sorry we will not have his contribution as an individual.

I draw to the attention of the House that as and from 1 February, last Friday, the traditional bedsit is no longer permitted under Irish law. This follows on from regulations introduced in 2009. Fortunately, many landlords have taken the necessary steps to upgrade their accommodation. Many people have warm and fuzzy feelings about their time in college and their early years of employment and look back with some fondness on the traditional bedsit. From my personal experience I have seen a period house divided into 17 units with three bathrooms shared by the occupants of those 17 units. One elderly lady shared a bathroom with numerous men and was afraid to leave her room after 6 p.m. to go to the toilet and had to avail of a potty under the bed. That is the reality of life for some people in Ireland in 2013. It falls on local authorities to ensure that scandal is a thing of the past.

Today marks the publication of the interdepartmental report under the chairmanship of Martin McAleese on the State's involvement in the Magdalen laundries.

The issue has been in the public domain for some time. We are all keen in this House to ensure justice for the survivors of the laundries. The lives these women were forced to endure during their time in them was nothing short of slavery and it is even more shocking to think that the last Magdalen laundry closed only in 1996. While we await the launch of the report later, some facts are known. These laundries were not in the middle of nowhere similar to other institutions where children were held. They were in the middle of the largest towns and cities in the country, including Cork, Galway, Limerick and Dublin. There is evidence that what went on in the laundries was an open secret. Women and girls were sentenced by the courts to serve time in the laundries with no release date and escapees were returned by the Garda. Some women were held prisoner in the laundries for their entire lives. To cap the indignity of having their names removed from them, they were buried in unmarked graves. I do not believe that the State can walk away from its responsibility or that we can ever rest while the torture endured by the Magdalen women goes unacknowledged. As one representative of the survivors put it, "A lot of people knew but didn't want to get involved." Nothing short of a full apology by the people and appropriate compensation will be enough. I hope we will have a full debate on the report following its publication.

I join in the tributes to former Senator Martin McAleese and, on behalf of my group, wish him a fond farewell and thank him for his contributions. I wish him every success with his future endeavours. I also thank his assistant, Ms Catherine Butler.

We all await the interdepartmental committee report on the investigation into the State's involvement in the Magdalen laundries, on which Mr. McAleese worked. Everyone is thinking of the women today. It is part of our shameful past. Some of the survivors had, and have, intellectual disabilities and mental health difficulties, while others have disabilities as a result of their incarceration and some continue to live in institutions. When I realised they were still not being properly looked after, I wondered how much of this was about our shameful past and how much was about today. The measure of our society will be how we deal with the report. Will they get the apology and the compensation they rightfully deserve? The people will look at this carefully and each of us, individually and collectively, has a role in ensuring the voices of the survivors are heard. I trust that when the report is published at 4 p.m., we will give a voice to their suffering and will ensure justice is done, as opposed to being talked about.

I acknowledge the work of Older and Bolder which has announced that it will close on 30 June 2013. I am saddened that a strong advocacy voice such as this will cease due to a lack of funding. The organisation was funded by Atlantic Philanthropies but will no longer be able to continue after 30 June. It played a strong role in our work on the rights of older people and it provided a strong co-ordinated voice during the recent budget discussions. There are seven excellent older people's organisations under the Older and Bolder umbrella and a strong co-ordinated voice helps us as Senators in our work in advocating for change. I thank Ms Patricia Conboy and her team.

We are all aware of the extraordinary role, although sometimes played in a quiet way, of former Senator Martin McAleese and his wife, the former President, Mary McAleese. The greatest tribute we can pay him is a practical one, which is to discuss as soon as is practicable the report on the Magdalen laundries which coincidentally is being released to the survivor groups, taking into account the fact that it is important that we read the report carefully and deal with it appropriately. However, a few comments can be made in advance of the report's publication. First, the issue has been dealt with in dribs and drabs. We had to force the situation open. I pay great tribute to Professor Jim Smith, an academic in Boston, who was instrumental in this.

Initially, the Government was not keen on taking on this issue and it still has not taken on Stanhope Street, nor Bethany Home, a Protestant institution. Why are we dealing with this issue in dribs and drabs? Why can we not come clean once and for all? Why can we not clean out this Augean stable and admit that this country was shamed by being brought before the United Nations Committee against Torture? Why can we not admit that what we had in this country was slave labour? The people concerned were forced to work. If they managed to escape, the instruments of the State, the courts and the police, brought them back. This was illegal as many of them had committed no crime at all. Some of them were just social casualties and some had been pregnant outside of marriage, which is not and should not be a crime. Many of them were not even in that category. However, they were all lumped together. No social welfare was paid for them, a criminal offence. The nuns acted illegally in not paying social welfare. The women received no remuneration and at the end of the month got a voucher that could get them a bar of soap. I find this absolutely shocking. These women are owed an apology and owed multiples of the wages they earned. I knew nothing about it at all. People say we are guilty, but I did not know it was going on. I never had as much as a handkerchief washed by them. I knew it had happened historically, but I did not realise it was going on until comparatively recently.

The second issue I wish to raise is also a matter of reproach to the political system, namely, the use of ministerial powers to advance hospital building programmes selectively in order to favour political cronies. This has been going on and what concerns me is the kind of response we got on Raidió Teilifís Éireann at the weekend when a commentator said that was why we had elected them, that was what we were paying them for and the people of Wexford and Kilkenny would be delighted. I have no doubt they will; that is very human. However, we are not charged with dealing preferentially with our political allies. There should be criteria. The people who need these services the most should get them. I am aware, for example, that Members on the Government side in the Lower House are being given selective advance information about such developments. This is wrong and corrupt. We have a Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform and I would like to ask him where is the reform in this. They should all bear in mind that when it involves public expenditure, it is not their money. It is the money of taxpayers and we are entitled to call them to account for it.

I thought it an extraordinarily brazen performance on the part of the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Phil Hogan, when he said he would make no apology for such lobbying and would continue to do it. He introduced the name of the late Susie Long, a woman who had died because of poverty and because the medical services did not reach out to her.

The Senator is way over time.

I will end on that point. I would like to ask whether the family of Susie Long was consulted about her being dragged into this and used as a cover for political opportunism. I feel shamed by what has been happening and know decent Fine Gael colleagues will feel the same. I spoke in this way when there was another Government and will not cease now because the Government is made up of people I regard as my friends.

I join in paying tribute to former Senator Martin McAleese, not just for the contribution he made in this House but also for the contribution he made long before he came here. The first time I met him was when I was Lord Mayor of Cork. I met him a number of times during that year and he was always very much aware of the organisations and groups he and the President were visiting on the particular days they were in Cork. He had significant knowledge of what was involved and the contributions people were making at local community level. He was also very much involved in dealing with people in Northern Ireland and made a significant contribution there.

I would like to raise the issue of the ruling by the data protection agency requiring the cards containing the results of blood tests on newborn children to be destroyed. All of these cards, known as Guthrie cards, are stored at Temple Street hospital, but now all of them, from 1984 to 2002, are to be destroyed.

Many medical people, including Senator John Crown, have objected strongly to this decision on the basis that these essential records could be used for research in the future. I ask that this wrong decision be rescinded and that these records be retained for future research. While the ruling of the Data Protection Commissioner may have some substance, I do not think all of the issues were considered in this case. I ask that the matter be taken up with the Minister for Health and the various Departments involved and that the decision be reversed.