Plan for Good Shepherd site in Cork city branded ‘unethical and insensitive’

A group representing Magdalene survivors has expressed deep concern at “unethical and insensitive” proposals at a former Cork Magdalene laundry.

Earlier this month, An Coimisiún Pleanála upheld a decision by Cork City Council to grant planning for a 957-bed development for student accommodation at the former Good Shepherd convent in Sunday’s Well.

Survivor group Justice For Magdalenes Research (JFMR) has claimed An Coimisiún Pleanála failed to address its concerns about the planned development by Bellmount Good Shepherd Limited, owned by developer brothers Pádraig and Séamus Kelleher.

Established in 1870 by the Good Shepherd Sisters, the convent served as a Magdalene laundry, orphanage, and industrial school until 1977, with thousands of women and children kept there over the years.

Submission

In a submission to An Coimisiún Pleanála, JFMR raised concerns at proposals to establish an “exhibit space” at the former Bake House to “display information relating to the site’s history as an orphanage and Magdalene laundry, and place of burial for Little Nellie”.

Some 110 nuns are buried in a graveyard on the east of the site, as is four-year-old Ellen Organ, or ‘Little Nellie of Holy God’, the so-called unofficial patron saint of Cork, who died in the orphanage in 1908.

At least 188 Magdalene women died at the Good Shepherd laundry, and many are believed to be buried in a mass grave on the site.

In an almost inaccessible corner on the north-western end of the former convent site, beyond the planned development, a vandalised cross bears the names of 30 Magdalene women. However, three of those women are also listed as being buried at St Joseph’s Cemetery.

Unethical

JFMR said proposals to “connect spaces intended to acknowledge the abusive history of Sunday’s Well with the final burial place of members of the religious order who perpetrated these abuses (were) unethical, insensitive to survivors ... and further (marginalised) the Magdalene women and girls buried at the opposite end of the site”.

An Coimisiún Pleanála and Bellmount Developments were asked for comment.