Nuns 'did their best' for children in industrial school

Tuesday February 8th 2005

THE Sisters of Charity have defended their record of management at St Patrick's Industrial School, Kilkenny, saying that the nuns who ran the school looked after the boys to the "best of their ability".

The head of the congregation, Sr Una O'Neill, was testifying to the Commission on Child Abuse yesterday and she said that the Sisters who worked at the school had "overwhelmingly positive memories" of their time there, and of their relationships with the children.

The testimony was the most positive to date offered to the Commission by a religious order.

Sr O'Neill acknowledged that some past residents "have painful and unhappy memories of St Patrick's", and that several have complained that they were sexually abused by farm hands employed by the school.

However, she insisted that in the main, "and given the staff-to-child ratio", and the lack of child-care training for the nuns, the children were well cared for physically and educationally, although they did not have the care they would have received "in a loving family".

Sr O'Neill also said that the nuns received regular visits from past pupils, although the number of visits has declined in recent years.

St Patrick's Industrial School was situated on an 80 acre farm outside Kilkenny. It was opened in 1879 and closed in 1966.

It was established to house almost 200 boys up to the age of ten. In the period 1933 to 1966, there was usually one nun and one staff member to every 30 or so children.

Sr O'Neill told the Commission that the vast majority of boys at the school were there because of a court order. She said the reasons offered by the courts for sending them to St Patrick's were various and included parents not 'exercising proper guardianship', and 'destitution'.

The Commission will also hear testimony in private from 11 former residents of the school.

David Quinn
Religious Affairs Correspondent

? Irish Independent