'They didn't want a child of colour running around Limerick': Former Ireland player on six years spent in an industrial school

Irish Examiner

26-05-2025

A former Ireland football and rugby player has told how she can find no reason for being locked up in a notorious Limerick industrial school, except that she was a 'black child born to a white mother'.
Jackie McCarthy O'Brien, aged 63, was the first person of colour to play for the Ireland senior women's soccer and rugby teams and won 13 caps for both.
Ms McCarthy O'Brien spent the first six years of her life incarcerated in the notorious all-girls industrial school Mount St Vincent — also known as 'The Mount' — on O'Connell Ave in Limerick, where she and other girls were treated with "horrible cruelty".
Despite extensive research, Ms McCarthy O'Brien says she can find no justification for her incarceration other than the fact that she was black. She was seized from her mother in 1961 under a court order and placed in the home when she was just two months old.
'I was a baby. I didn't know what was going on,' she said. 'I was put in there at two months, and I stayed there until I was nearly six.
'That's a very long time for a child to be in an institution, they are the formative years."
She says the legislation that allowed the courts to admit her to the State-run school was known as Section 55 of the Childcare Act. She believes this was used as a "cover" to incarcerate her.
'Section 55 just covered their ass," Ms McCarthy O'Brien said. "It happens in situations where a child is orphaned by both parents dying, or one parent can't look after it if one dies, it covers a multitude of things."
Despite the fact her unmarried mother was desperate to keep her, according to Ms McCarthy O'Brien, the "State, the nuns, and priests used that act" to lock her up.
She puts it simply: "They didn't want a black child running around Limerick.
'I have checked this a lot and got assistance from the Child Law Clinic at UCC [University College Cork]. I believe I was put in there because I was a child of colour.
'It doesn't say why [she was sent to the school] on my records, but every record states child of colour repeatedly. I believe that's why I was taken in there."
Missing records
Four years ago, Ms McCarthy O'Brien began the search for her records but was told that they didn't exist.
She said: 'I secured my own records eventually, the State didn't give them to me. I was told by the nuns and the State that they are not there. I was passed from pillar to post. I was told there was no records.
'Eventually I got them my own way, and they did exist. I applied under Freedom of Information knowing from a source they did exist."
Born in Birmingham in 1961 to a white Irish mother, Precious O'Halloran, from Limerick, and a Jamaican father, whom she never met, Ms McCarthy O'Brien moved to Limerick at two weeks old.
'Mum had returned home without my birth father, but when she came back, she never told anyone her baby was black," she said.
Jackie McCarthy O'Brien with her team-mates. She was capped 13 times for her country.
'Then a knock came to the door, a priest and two nuns and two gardaí came and took me from my mum's arms. I was told she ran after the ambulance'.
Jackie McCarthy O'Brien: 'Wearing the green jersey made me Irish, it made me very important. I was accepted.' Picture: Eamon Ward
Ms McCarthy O'Brien describes Mount St Vincent Industrial school "as a very cold and cruel place. I had one friend Lilian, and we bonded, we slept in each other's bed and if we wet one bed then only one of us would go without breakfast.
'It was about survival and that is an invaluable technique. Two wet beds meant two hungry mouths.
"They would do horrible things, like make you stand naked for hours waiting for your bath on a Saturday night — the black kids would dirty the water they would say, so we went last.
'Mum came to visit most weekends. I didn't know she was [my] mother, she had been told not to tell me. She was also white, and I did not relate to that. It was confusing."
Ms McCarthy O'Brien remained living with the nuns until her mother married a former All-Ireland handball champion, Mickey O'Brien, in 1966. At that stage she began going home with the couple for breaks.
'It took me two years to feel safe in the house,' she explained. 'The only home I knew was the industrial school, to me they were two strangers.
'But after Mickey married mum, they tried to get me out of there but couldn't because the nuns didn't really want you getting out very often, and the best they got was visits.
'One Christmas they came and got me out and never let me go back, the nuns came knocking to get me back but Mickey said: 'No you're not getting her back.''
Adoption barriers
Mickey O'Brien never adopted Jackie because of barriers put in their way at the time by the state.
'The nuns told him, do not adopt a child of colour and don't give her your good Irish name," she said. "But he raised me as his own and I began calling him dad."
She credits him with recognising her talent for sport: 'He encouraged me. He was extraordinary, he is my dad.'
Ms McCarthy O'Brien went on to play for Ireland in both football and rugby. She represented Ireland 13 times in football between 1981–1993. After retiring from football at 33, she switched to Rugby Union and won 13 caps for Ireland, playing between 1994 and 1998. It was on the pitch that she finally found a sense of belonging.
Jackie McCarthy O'Brien playing rugby for Ireland.
'I started playing soccer at 11 in 1973, and I went on to play with Limerick," she said.
'Football was my escape on the pitch, I could put my head into it.
'Wearing the green jersey made me Irish, it made me very important. I was accepted."
Jackie went on to marry and have three children. Her daughter Sam is also a former Ireland soccer player. They are the first, and so far only, mother and daughter to represent the Republic of Ireland soccer team.
Jackie has since split from her husband, but they remain on good terms.
'I was 21 when I got married' she said. "We have three children, Sam aged 42, Robert is 40, Stacey is 36, and I adopted Kaya, who was in my care from birth and is now 18."
A few years ago, she traced her biological father's roots and found a half brother in the UK, whom she has since met. His mother was Irish too.
Despite the trauma she faced in her early years, Ms McCarthy O'Brien said she has no ill feeling towards anyone.
No ill will
'I only recently started to realise there was a past,' she explained. 'The Christine Buckley documentary was very traumatic for me, I realised there were other people like me because everything was brushed under the carpet, and we never spoke about it all.
'I did four years in counselling, and I then had an understanding of what was taken from me.
'I did not want to be bitter or to let the nuns and the church take my soul or my heart, and going through counselling was a healing process. You learn to leave it go as best you can."
She said that 'resilience and learning to keep getting back up' is how she has lived her life, a skill she learned from her mum and dad.
'I was lucky because my parents would encourage me and they always said: 'Go and do it'.
'I didn't grow up with the word trauma, some use it willy nilly, but we all have a trauma in our lives.
'It's what you can take in life, and deal with the pain and suffering no matter what it is, and still be a good decent person, it's all about self esteem — the industrial schools they took that from people, but I was lucky I got it back, my self-esteem.
'I have no ill will towards anybody, no bitterness, and I never looked for redress, my parents didn't look for it either.
'I made my own house, I did well, I owe nobody anything. I went out and worked. I have four beautiful children, and I got on with it.'
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