FIRST there was the Flying Nun, then the Singing Nun. Now brace yourselves for the Undercover Nun. A Presentation sister from Carlow has helped Channel 4 entrap an Israeli arms dealer, who will be exposed in a documentary to be broadcast on April 3.

Sister Barbara Raftery, along with her students from Scoil Chriost Rí, have also helped expose the lack of regulation in Ireland that allows arms dealers free rein.

Their foray into the murky world of secret dealing began in October, when Sister Barbara was approached by Action From Ireland (Afri), a human rights group with which she had worked previously. Afri asked if some of her students at Scoil Chriost Rí would be interested in taking part in a project for the Dispatches documentary series on Channel 4.

The Leaving Cert schoolgirls — Alison Lewis, Maeve O’Sullivan, Clare Coleman, Laura Kearns and Mary Maloney, along with fifth-year student Margaret Hyland — set up a company called Seachtar, the Irish word for seven.

They contacted an Israeli company that was advertising stone-throwing machines. The husband-and-wife-run company offered to send the equipment to Ireland under an “agriculture” classification — in contravention of Israeli law. They also volunteered to travel to Ireland to give a demonstration.

A Dispatches team, led by the presenter Mark Thomas, then took over, setting up a company called Williams Defence Ireland. They paid the Israeli company $7,500 (€6,250) for the machine, which can fire up to 600 stones a minute.

“They called it a manure- dispersal unit,” said Thomas. “They were breaking the law in Israel. They needed an arms licence to discuss the deal in the first place, and they needed a licence to export. They have admitted they had neither.”

Although Israel classifies stone-throwing machines as arms, Ireland has no such classification, making it legal to import the equipment.

The dealer and his wife gave a demonstration to Thomas in a field in Portlaoise. The schoolgirls were hiding nearby and listened on headphones.

“When he offered to come over to demonstrate how it worked, I was nervous,” said Sister Barbara. “I didn’t want the students to be part of the confrontation, though I was happy to be part of it myself.”

Once Thomas revealed that he was a reporter, the schoolgirls confronted the dealers, saying the machines were used against teenagers. The dealer argued that the machinery could also be used to fire Plasticine balls and sweets.

“The two Israelis were actually lovely people and that’s what I found so awful about the whole thing,” said the nun. “He said the machine wasn’t used to kill anyone, that it was for crowd control. But when he demonstrated it, my heart jumped. It was frightening to see the stones coming out at such speed.”

She defended her entrapment tactics as both moral and within the law. “People might criticise us for teaching the girls about this, but the purpose of it was to teach them about human rights and how to be active citizens,” Sister Barbara said.

The Dispatches documentary, entitled After School Arms Club, argues that Ireland’s lack of regulation means it is legal to do such deals in Ireland, even if the weapons never come here but just move from one country to another. The schoolgirls brokered deals to transport a stun baton from Korea to California, and also imported leg irons to Ireland from South Africa.

“It took a length of time to look into what was available,” said Sister Barbara. “The shocking thing was that these websites were selling normal things like kettles. Yet once you went deeper, it turned out that they were also selling arms.

“We didn’t want to do anything illegal or immoral. Leg irons, which Amnesty call torture weapons, are not illegal in Ireland. Stun batons are illegal here, so we brokered them from Korea to California. A human rights activist received the stun baton and dismantled it.”

Thomas described the school team as remarkable women. “When they brokered a deal to bring over leg irons from South Africa, they could have sent them to a human rights contact in Egypt, to show how easy it was to move them,” he said.

“Instead the girls decided not to, because it could have caused problems for the human rights defenders in Egypt if they were caught with this kind of equipment. I thought that was a very mature decision.

“What we’re concentrating on is changing the law at the European end. The European Commission’s position is that all members have to introduce laws on brokering, so Ireland is in breach of EU commitments.”

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