Author Caelainn Hogan discusses her book The Republic of Shame, centred on the Mother and Baby and County Institutions of Ireland, with Dr Maev McDaid.

Until alarmingly recently, the Catholic Church -acting in concert with the Irish state- operated a network of institutions for the concealment, punishment and exploitation of ‘fallen women’. In the Magdalene laundries, girls and women were incarcerated and condemned to servitude. And in the mother-and-baby institutions, women who had become pregnant out of wedlock were hidden from view and -in most cases- their babies were adopted – sometimes illegally.

“At least in The Handmaid’s Tale they value babies, mostly. Not so in the true stories here”, Margaret Atwood responding to Republic of Shame.

More then 100,000 people are thought to have been directly affected by Mother and Baby and County Institutions in Ireland. Many of these men and women moved to England. Join Caelainn Hogan (author, Republic of Shame) and Liverpool-based researcher and survivor-advocate, Dr Maev McDaid, in a panel chaired by the Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool.

This is a partnership event delivered between the Festival and the Institute of Irish Studies at University of Liverpool.

This event contributes to the Festival’s In:Visible Women, Family and Heritage work strands.