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While there is some evidence to suggest that Dominican women
were already in Ireland in the 13th century,
our beginnings can only be
traced back with certainty to the city of Galway, in the west of Ireland, in
1644.
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In that year (1644) the first women gathered in Galway to live
the Dominican way of life. Their life story is a chequered one, through repeated
persecution and exile. For some years the group had to leave Galway and go into
exile to find a safe haven in convents on mainland Europe.
Eventually, in 1686, two sisters, Juliana Nolan and Mary Lynch
returned to Galway. Others soon joined them. In 1718 they sent a small group to
Dublin. A century later their followers leased a house in Cabra, on the
outskirts of Dublin, a convent that was to become the mother-house to many
groups of Dominican women around the world.
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By the 1860's the community in Cabra was strong enough to send
missionaries abroad.
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Groups of sisters sailed the long journey from Dublin to:
- Lisbon, Portugal, (in 1856, 1861)
[A group from Galway had gone to
Lisbon originally in 1639]
- USA in 1860
- South Africa in 1863 and 1867
- Australia in 1867 and 1868
- New Zealand in 1870
More recently, new missions have opened in
- Argentina (1978)
- Brazil (1991)
- Bolivia (1999)
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Who Are We 
