Dublin City Council is to vote next Monday on the potential sale of the last Magdalene Laundry in State ownership.

It is considering a sale of the two-acre site on Sean McDermott Street to a Japanese hotel chain.

The reported sale price is €14m.

However the Social Democrats say the site should be preserved as a 'Site of Conscience'.

They have set up a petition online, calling on councillors to reject the sale.

A Dublin City Council worker shines a torch over debris on the floor of the corridor in the now derelict Sisters of Our Lady of Charity Magdalene Laundry on Sean McDermott St in Dublin's north inner city in 2013 | Image: Julien Behal/PA Archive/PA Images

The party says: "The institutional and clerical abuses that have caused pain and destruction to so many people and families in Ireland must be acknowledged.

"We must never forget, and we must never allow them to happen again.

"This is the new Ireland. We can and must remember."

The interior of the now derelict Sisters of Our Lady of Charity Magdalene Laundry on Sean McDermott St in Dublin's north inner city in 2013 | Image: Julien Behal/PA Archive/PA Images

Each Dublin city councillor will be e-mailed a copy of the petition ahead of the meeting.

The former laundry on Sean McDermott Street also featured prominently during the recent visit of Pope Francis to Ireland.

Thousands of people marched in solidarity with clerical abuse survivors from the Garden of Remembrance to the site.