How a Cork town opened its arms to refugees: 'You just need to love your community'

Fermoy group providing a blueprint for communities nationally in how to welcome refugees

Kate O'Connell, Vanessa McCarthy, Jane Jeffreys, Jenny O'Connor, Polly Egerton and Olga O'Mahony, all with Fermoy For All, sorting clothes for refugees. Picture: Jim Coughlan

A little girl twirled with delight in her double-breasted buttoned coat, a gift from strangers to ward off the Irish winter, before rushing upstairs in the refugee accommodation centre to show her pregnant mother.

She had fled danger in her homeland with her family and was given shelter in a disused old convent in Fermoy, Co Cork.