‘I’ll chain myself to statue’ vows angry playwright

Date Published: 29-Jul-2010

By Bernie Ní Fhlatharta

PLAYWRIGHT and poet, Patricia Burke Brogan vows she will chain herself to the Magdalen statue in Forster Street rather than see it removed.

Fears that the statue, a memorial to the women who suffered in the Magdalen Laundry, will be removed to make way for a bus corridor has raised alarm and concern.

Ms Burke Brogan, herself a former nun who spent a short time in the Galway Magdalen Laundry and who wrote about her experiences in a play called Eclipsed – which was later made into a film – said she was horrified.

“I thought I was living a nightmare when I heard it was going to be moved. That statue represents the pain of the women and that pain is in the very earth on which the statue was erected on the site of the old gateway.

“It would be much better that they would knock the bank across the road, the Anglo Irish that has given us all the trouble, if they want to widen the road.

“Removing this would be another violation of the women who already suffered in the Magdalen and who were remembered and honoured when that statue was put up.

“All that space is sacred space and at the moment it gives great comfort to visitors who place flowers and candles at the base of the statue.”

She said she was definitely going to resist it and that she would be on the warpath if any effort was made to move it.

“I will chain myself to it if they come to move it,” she promised.

The statue was erected over a year ago and may now be in the pathway of a proposed bus corridor, but City Council has guaranteed that if it is moved, it will be placed somewhere else in the general vicinity.

For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune.