A LOCAL Republican Sinn Fein (RSF) activist is calling for the Good Shepherd convent and other institutions in the city where the Catholic Church were involved, to be investigated in light of the recent mother and baby home scandal in Tuam.
Sean O’Neill maintains that the latest revelations represent yet another harrowing aspect of the relationship between Church and State in post Civil War Ireland. The Limerick RSF activist insists that all the other institutions where the Catholic Church were involved in State policy must also be examined.
The Good Shepherd institution opened on Clare Street in 1848. Now home to Limerick School of Art and Design (LSAD), it served as a Magdalene Laundry for over a century. Mr O’Neill feels the role of the nuns at the convent must now be probed.
“In Limerick, the Good Shepherd nuns ran an industrial school and a laundry where young children were incarcerated until they reached 16 years. The laundry was a commercial undertaking using child labour and the conditions seemed to be prison like,” Mr O’Neill claims.
He went on to say that young girls at the Good Shepherd Convent were marched along the streets of Limerick on various outings to the city like “prisoners being paraded”.
“There seemed to be no concern for their dignity or privacy and the name the Good Shepherd struck fear into the hearts of many Limerick boys and girls who were threatened with the place by their parents. The spectre of the Good Shepherd was used to frighten their children such was the reputation of the institution in Limerick,” he said.
