IRELAND
Irish Times
Mar 22, 2017
Marie O’Halloran
Documents, including contracts that showed children being “effectively sold into slavery”, are at the centre of a dispute between the Christian Brothers and a former industrial school resident who retained the papers for more than 40 years.
Tom Wall, a former resident of St Joseph’s industrial school in Glin, Co Limerick, obtained the documents in 1973, when the Christian Brothers who were leaving Glin asked him to burn files on every resident.
Mr Wall held onto his own file as well as a significant number of files on other residents. In 2015, he donated them to the University of Limerick so they could be maintained and catalogued.
Fianna Fáil TD Niall Collins told the Dáil that the Christian Brothers were now threatening legal action and seeking to recover all the documents from the university. He called on the State to intervene to secure the documents.
The Limerick TD said Mr Wall believed the Brothers could have a copy of the documents but not the originals because he felt they “cannot be trusted” with exclusive possession of the original documents. A number of the documents “are incriminating”, he said.
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