Convent ‘paid pocket money’ to toy-packers

By Jp O’malley
Sunday Times
March 27, 2016

http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/ireland/article1682377.ece?CMP=OTH-gnws-standard-2016_03_26

The Good Shepherd Sisters convent in Waterford’s harsh living conditions were dramatised in the film The Magdalene Sisters

WOMEN housed by the Good Shepherd Sisters in Waterford packaged board games for the global toy franchise Hasbro in return for “pocket money” as recently as 2012, The Sunday Times can reveal.

Many of the women packaging popular Hasbro board games such as Mouse Trap, KerPlunk and Buckaroo! in Waterford had previously worked in a Magdalene laundry run by the religious order and continued to live in sheltered housing after it closed in 1996.

“In the 1980s, Hasbro entered into an agreement with the Good Shepherd Sisters in Waterford to provide materials for packaging by our residents,” said the Good Shepherd Sisters in a statement. “The residents who participated in this activity were regularly given what was then known as their ‘Hasbro money envelope’. ”

The Good Shepherd Sisters said that the order “in no way profited from this commercial relationship with Hasbro, which ended in 2012”.