'A priest and two nuns and two gardaí came and took me from my mum’s arms'

Irish international player states of Mount St Vincent: 'I believe I was put there because I was a child of colour'

Jackie McCarthy O’Brien at her home in Ardnacrusha, Co Clare. Picture: Eamon Ward

A former Ireland football and rugby player has told how she can find no reason for being locked up in a notorious Limerick industrial school, except that she was a “black child born to a white mother”.

Jackie McCarthy O’Brien, aged 63, was the first person of colour to play for the Ireland senior women’s soccer and rugby teams and won 13 caps for both.