Small Things Like These: Magdalene laundries drama is a powerful rumination on compassion – and its limits

By Ruth Barton, Professor in Film Studies, Trinity College Dublin

In 2021, Ireland’s then Taoiseach (prime minister), Enda Kenny, delivered a formal apology to the survivors of the Magdalene laundries. The laundries were religious institutions where unmarried mothers and other “fallen” women were forced into slave labour.

“It struck me,” he said, “that for generations Ireland had created a particular portrait of itself as a good living God-fearing nation. Through this and other reports we know this flattering self-portrait to be fictitious…

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