BCC must clarify this decision

Monday November 8th 2004

Sir - The Broadcasting Complaints Commission ruled recently against a Liveline programme aired on RTE Radio 1 in October last year. The programme in question addressed the life and death of Ms Margaret Bullen and the treatment she received at the hands of the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity (also known as Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge).

As a contributor to the programme in question, I read the BCC's ruling with dismay. Moreover, I challenge whether the board engaged in the necessary research to arrive at their finding. Indeed, I charge that their findings are riddled with inaccuracies; the very charge they level at the programme and its contributors. Finally, I ask that they now clarify the following points as they undermine their initial findings.

The BCC's summary of complaint states that Ms Bullen "worked in the High Park Convent in Drumcondra, Dublin". Quite the contrary, when I participated in the programme I stated, as did two subsequent callers, that Ms Bullen worked at the Gloucester Street Laundry, located at the Sean MacDermott Street Convent of the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity (commonly referred to as the Sean MacDermott Street Laundry) in the city centre.

Indeed, Ms Bullen lived at St Joseph's Industrial School (attached to High Park Convent in Drumcondra) until she was 16 years of age. This latter institution has been closed for some 30-plus years, and thus it was impossible for Ms Bullen to live there. It was only when Ms Bullen became ill, that the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity returned her to High Park in Drumcondra, to a nursing home, Beech Lawn, for Magdalene women either too elderly or no longer physically capable of working for them. Ms Bullen only spent a matter of months back at High Park when she finally passed away at the age of 51 at the Mater Hospital.

The BCC decision also lists among its alleged "inaccuracies" the programme's suggestion that "the nuns lived in the lap of luxury compared to the conditions they made Ms Bullen live in". However, the point of comparison was never the nuns' nursing home in Drumcondra. Rather, it was the conditions at the Gloucester Street Laundry where Ms Bullen spent most of her adult years engaged in back-breaking labour.

Similarly the decision declares as "inaccurate" the claim that Ms Bullen "was buried in a mass grave". The grave in question is at Glasnevin Cemetery and is commonly referred to as the Magdalene plot. Has the board visited this burial site? I applied the adjective "mass" to this grave site, and remain uncertain how else to describe it. Similarly, I remain perplexed as to why Margaret Bullen was not given her own grave with her own headstone. After a lifetime of working without compensation for the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, surely she was entitled to this one modicum of basic human dignity.

Finally, the BCC decision suggests it is inaccurate to suggest that Ms Bullen's family were not informed of her death by the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity. Suffice to say that Ms Bullen's daughter called the Liveline programme in question after hearing of the death of her mother for the first time over the nation's airwaves.
Imelda Murphy,
Berkeley Street, Nashua,
New Hampshire, USA

� Irish Independent