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THE SISTERS OF the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary have decided to sell a 40-acre estate in Cork which accommodates a range of services for vulnerable families and children.
Over the past twenty years, €30 million in State funding has been spent on Bessborough in Blackrock on the southside of Cork city to maintain and upgrade the site.
However, 100 staff at the facility were called to a meeting on Tuesday and told that their jobs would be lost within three months.
The nuns are reportedly looking for another service provider to take over the services provided by the facility, but not at the existing site.
According to a staff statement released to 96FM, the religious order attached to the site have decided to sell the estate as part of a restructuring operation.
Staff have said that the sale is a “run and grab all attempt by the Bessborough nuns”.
“The Bessborough Estate is in the final processes of being sold and the nuns, with their headquarters in the UK, who ran the infamous Mother and Baby Home are now due to make €12 millions for themselves and pocket the money despite a long legacy of questionable services for mothers and babies in Ireland,” the statement said.
Staff also said the 40-acre estate delivered a range of vital services to vulnerable families and children, an award winning crèche, and a wide range of employment services.
“The nuns are selling the lands so as to maximise return on the sale of this prime development land,” they added.
Protective notice
It is understood that the staff have have effectively been put on protective notice, but have been given no reassurances of redundancies or alternative jobs.
Staff also say that the the nuns have abandoned their founding purposes and moral compass.
“At the heart of the work of the Bessborough Centre over the last twenty years has been the provision of social inclusion supports for vulnerable families,” they said.
“In recent years, the centre has become renowned for its specialist and comprehensive work in supporting families and keeping them together.
“The closure of the services is a total abandonment of the Christian vision of supporting life.
“The nuns have decided that the easiest way out is simply to sell whatever vision they espoused.
“Though the nuns are nominally the governors of the centre at Bessborough, they have effectively been absent from the operation and management of the centre for ten years.
“Yet the nuns are about to run off with a significant amount of money, leaving none in Ireland to compensate staff or the State for the huge investment that they have made in the family services.”
Relocation prospects uncertain
Staff say that the centre is viable, provides necessary services and is a large employer in the city.
Tara Keogh, a child protection specialist based at the centre, said that staff are unsure about their prospects for relocation.
“We are all trying to put our heads trying to think about that but I don’t know how realistic it is at this point with such short notice,” she said.
“We have the benefit of the large grounds here. Our community employment scheme maintains fabulous grounds here, which are very therapeutic and necessary for the families we work with.”
A statement issued by a PR company on behalf of the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary said that, “after much consideration and soul searching, they have decided to cease their involvement with the centre”. The statement said that the order was looking for a new service provider to continue the work at a different location.
It continued:
“At a meeting with staff at the centre yesterday evening the Sisters explained that this decision has been taken in the context of the overall restructuring of the work of the congregation in keeping with present resources. The sisters in Cork are part of an international congregation based in London.
“The Sisters want to again affirm the excellent service being provided at the centre by dedicated and committed staff. The Sisters recognise the concern this decision will create for staff and we will now be actively seeking another service provider that will continue this excellent service into the future.
“The Sisters previously announced their decision to sell a significant portion of the lands at Bessborough and this process is ongoing.”
The centre currently offers a residential parent and baby unit for families in crisis who have young children or who are pregnant, a supervised child contact/access service, a family support service to assist families-at-risk in keeping their children safe and to remain together and a community crèche.
It also is home to a secondary school and training centre for second-chance education.
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If ever there was a reason for a compulsory purchase order.
@Mike O’Flaherty: purchase? Just take it off em. How many babies are buried on those grounds?
@GrahamMManning: As far as is known at present, one Baby is buried on the grounds. The other approximately 900 to 1200 bodies are currently missing and the Sacred Heart nuns claim they have no idea where they are.
@Paul Jude Redmond: but they know where all the money went you can bet
@patrick darcy: I live and grew up down the road from there. Have been around the grounds throughout my childhood and later. Have been there in a professional capacity and have made use of the Creche. My reaction is not knee jerk. Completely agree with a full and thorough inspection of the grounds as well as investigation into the abuse allegedly perpetrated by the nuns and if tis all nonsense (it isn’t) then sell away.
The state should just confiscate it and plenty of other church property along with it. End of.
@GrahamMManning: Would be interesting to know they acquired the land in the first place, see no reason why the Government cannot get involved with a view to confiscating the buildings and land.
Dealing with the nuns’s PR company? Says it all.
@alan: NUNcorp.
I’m amazed the staff are so surprised. Everyone knows the Sacred Hearts are completely mercenary and money grabbing.
And it’s hardly a coincidence that the Inquiry into Mother and Baby homes is due to report in February next year…
@Paul Jude Redmond: exactly,
It’s certainly a case of sell the property and get the money out of Ireland ASAP
Ah the morals or the organised religious institutions…… non existent…
Nuns on the Run
@pat seery: “we don’t tolerate nudity in any shape or form ”
Coltrane dying in the women’s shower
Why did or government invest so much money into a business which was a private organisation
And they run away with the profits
And they can’t afford 24/7
CAT LAB IN WATERFORD
@Kipper O Keeffe: Good question.
THE FIRST time I wrote about the issue of the women who were incarcerated in Magdalene homes was in September 1993. The grounds of the largest such home in the UK or Ireland, High Park in Drumcondra, Dublin, had been sold off to a property developer by the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity. The graveyard was included in the deal – the bodies of the Magdalenes were dug up and re-interred in Glasnevin Cemetery. I noticed that at the same time, the sisters had lost a lot of money speculating on the shares of what was Ireland’s first great bubble company, Guinness Peat Aviation. (Fintan O’Toole.The Irish Times June 2010)
Grounds should be confiscated by the guards/state on the grounds of serious crime scene.
Also though Nuns take a vow on poverty !
@Kerrie Roche: Vow of poverty was for the sheeple ,,, not for the Commandant Rev Mother’s.
Lovely Christian work being done. The State should seize the land and kick the order out of the country.
It’s like the storm a few years back in the Dublin mountains and some fallen tree roots exposed some poor soul. The guards were afraid who else the dogs would sniff out. Another ‘Tuam like’ situation. God help us what will the underground imaging will show.
Another proof that privatising the provision of social & health services is a poor choice.
The state will now have to pay a top developer valuation to maintain these services & its e30 million fitting out.
One would expect that such state input to any facility would be based on a sound lease anyway, so how come it wasn’t tied down properly?
They are selling to pay compensation to children who were abused by priests
@Stevie Doran: ya that’s definitely what they’ll be doing with the cash….
@Stevie Doran: God bless your innocence Stevie…
@Stevie Doran: Bertie ‘fond of a dig out’ Ahern gave the religious orders a get-out-of-jail free card on the eve of the 2002 general election capping the liability of all the religious orders at a ridiculously low €128m and going over the head of his then Attorney General Michael McDowell. His then Minister of Finance Charlie McCreevy did not sign it. The State was flying blind. It did not know how many victims there might be – the orders held the records. It did not know the extent or the seriousness of the abuse. In effect, the government signed a blank cheque. Nothing was published or announced, but the deal had been done. The 2002 deal still stands.
@Sean: think you’ll find it’s close to €1billion
https://www.thejournal.ie/religious-abuse-compensation-3278789-Mar2017/%3famp=1
@Stevie Doran: Think it over. The priests had clerical insurance to cover them. It was only when insurance companies worldwide started refusing to pay for the damage caused by child abusers, that parishes started moving money into different bank accounts. It doesn’t seem likely that any order of nuns would top up their funding or bail them out at all. Why would they opt to subsidise some group of abusive priests? Why would you think that?
Who donated the land in the first place, most churches/convents/, industrial schools/orphanages etc are built on land that was practically given to them and built through donations.
Eg the old Galway gaol site was sold to the Bishop for £10 in the 1960s by the council and then built by the donations of the locals, I’m sure this is the case everywhere.
I would be interested to know if anyone knows if this is the case or not???
@John Walsh: They should be handed back to the ‘Community ‘.!!
That land belongs to the state as the taxpayers pumped 30MILLION into it..also NUNS TOOK A VOW OF POVERTY so how can they own anything..Time the Goverment grew a pair and send C.A.B. IN to retrieve our land
@Marianne: the vow of poverty is for the individual nuns, not for the order. Each nun can’t own anything but they have the use of what the order owns.
Blame Lady Arabella Denny,. If she had left things as they were, women and children dying in the streets – we would’nt have this wave of indignation.
See Wikipedia
In June 1767 she founded Magdalen Asylum for Protestant Girls in Leeson Street, which was a home for fallen women or penitent prostitutes, who were provided with accommodation, clothing, food and religious instruction. It was the first charitable institution of its kind in Ireland, and became a model for institutions throughout the country.
@John Lynch: that’s right John..the also stole their babies and sold them to American couples
@John Lynch: Inocence of the Nuns became ‘Corrupted ‘ in Time, as they realized what Gifts in Money they got and the Making of more Money was possible. ‘ Power corrupts, absolute Power Corrupts absolutely’.!!
We have the legislation to take this land back
The criminal assists will take a guys house or car for even selling cannabis but using teen girls a slave labour seems fine with our political class.
Btw the sisters of mercy have have a billion in the bank,,,that they just like to look at…
@David cotter: in fairness the Sisters of Mercy are not the Sisters of Charity!!!!
@Micheal S. O’ Ceilleachair: tomato/tomeato
Easy! Take back the 30 million!
I was adopted from there in 1966. I went to see it last year. What’s going to happen to the burial plots if it is sold? And the money should be given to the homeless and people in poverty and all those affected by what went on in Bessboro all those years ago
There’s a lot to be said for giving the state a share of ownership in return for spend large sums on the development and upkeep of institutions like this, or hospitals or schools that are technically owned by private groups providing services to the public.
That’s a bit dodgy all right. It should absolutely be CPO’d off them.
Demolition of every building on those evil grounds should take place and a proper search for those poor dead babies and probably some dead Mother’s also, thier definitely running something to hide, I have experience of that place it’s evil so are the “staff” running it even today.
Innocuous comments showing any support for the church deleted. Demented anti Catholic hate speech comments are left untouched. Fair & balanced from the journal.
@Seamus Mac:
That’s the way it is nowadays. Knowledge gets no attention.
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