Irish PM sorry for suffering of 'fallen women' at church-run laundries

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny has apologised to thousands of women who suffered in appalling conditions in church-run laundries, after a report found that many of them were sent there by the state.

More than 10,000 women were sent to the Magdalene laundries between 1922 and 1996 where they worked for no pay while the religious orders ran the laundries as commercial bodies.

They were sent to the institutions if they were suspected of being "fallen women", including those who fell pregnant outside marriage or those who were branded promiscuous or flirtatious in the predominantly Catholic country.

"To those residents who went into the Magdalene laundries through a variety of ways, 26 per cent of them from state involvement or state intervention: I'm sorry for those people that lived in that kind of environment," Kenny told parliament.

His comments came after the publication of a report investigating the involvement of the Irish state found that more than a quarter of the women were there due to referrals by social services, schools and the criminal justice service.

The investigation chaired by Senator Martin McAleese was launched in July 2011 to establish the extent of state involvement.