HUNDREDS of people welcomed survivors of the notorious Magdalene Laundries scandal to a reception in Dublin city centre yesterday, the first time the women had gathered in Ireland.

Irish President Michael D Higgins had apologised on Tuesday to the thousands of women forced to do unpaid labour in Catholic-run workhouses between 1922 and 1996 who he said had been “failed by the state.”

Unmarried mothers, women with learning disabilities and girls who had been abused were forced to enter the Magdalene laundries over seven decades.