The Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) is calling on the Government to produce its own State records relating to the Magdalene Laundries.

It comes as the group presents its follow-up report for the United Nations Committee Against Torture as part of the Dublin Human Rights Festival on Saturday.

The ICCL says this is their "rebuttal" to an interim report from the Government to the same committee.

In that report, under the chairmanship of Senator Martin McAleese, the Government claimed there was an "absence of any credible evidence of systematic torture or criminal abuse" in the Magdalene Laundries.

However the committee found clear evidence of State involvement in the religious run work houses.

The report found that more than one-quarter of 10,000 women who entered the laundries were referred there by the State.

Dr Maeve O'Rourke is a senior policy officer with the ICCL.

"The Department of Justice wrote to the UN Committee Against Torture in August - it says it has no plans to release any of the State records relating to the Magdalene Laundries that it now holds in the McAleese archive in the Department of the Taosieach.

"It said that it gave all of the nuns records back to them when McAleese was finished with his investigation; and there are no plans and they've no powers to compel the production of evidence in the future."

"We completely reject the idea that the State doesn't know of systematic, criminal treatment and inhumane and degrading treatment of girls and women in Magdalene Laundries across the country for most of the 20th century.

"And we're calling on the Government to immediately produce its own State records relating to the Magdalene Laundries."