In 1988, Irish disability activist Paddy Doyle (1951-2020) published his memoir, The God Squad, about being sent to live in St Michael's Industrial School run by the Sisters of Mercy in Cappoquin, Counter Waterford.

Paddy Doyle talks in The God Squad of being so badly abused at St Michael's that he was left with psychosomatic condiitions and confined to a wheelchair from the age of 10.

The God Squad was groundbreaking, an immediate best-seller which won the Dublin Lord Mayor's Award, the Sunday Tribune Arts Award for Literature and the Christy Brown Award for Literature.

Dermot Bolger, who published The God Squad, said the book "played a part in transforming Ireland."