DUBLIN — Ireland’s last surviving “Magdalene laundry,” where thousands of unmarried mothers and other unwanted women were forced to work without pay in abject conditions, often until they died, is to be preserved as a state-funded memorial to all victims of incarceration and abuse in church and state-run institutions, the Irish government has announced.

The government’s move on Tuesday overturned a previous decision by Dublin City Council, the owner of the former convent and laundry, which closed down in 1996, to sell the site for redevelopment as a budget hotel.