Alexander Dallas (1791–1869), Rector of Wonston, Hampshire, who since 1843 had been involved in actively evangelizing Roman Catholic people in Ireland.
[4] Dallas advanced the work through the provision of Scripture Readers, missionary clergymen and the support of the Bishops and Clergy of the Church of Ireland.
Scripture Readers were fluent Irish speakers who were trained to preach the Gospel and refute what they considered false doctrine.
The ICM retreated from the west and subsequent work centred on the city of Dublin, where it continued in the attempt to draw converts from the Roman Catholic population.
By the time of his death in 1869, Dallas had established 21 churches, 49 schools, and four orphanages and had between 400 and 500 full-time workers employed in preaching the Gospel throughout Ireland.
[5] The further continuing gradual decline of the organisation and estrangement from mainstream Anglican thought in southern Ireland is outlined in Moffitt's, The Irish Church Missions to the Roman Catholics 1849–1950 (MUP 2011).
The evangelistic work of Irish Church Missions on Bachelor's Walk, near O'Connell Street, continues amongst Dublin's student and international community.
Miriam Moffitt, Postdoctorate Research Fellow at NUI Maynooth stated in her book Soupers and Jumpers, that in reality the poor of Connemara found themselves pawns in a power struggle between the Protestant and Roman Catholic churches.
Dallas' anti-catholic tirades cause much dissension within the Irish Society, which, contrary to ICM practice, did not always require its scripture readers to first convert to Anglicanism.
Dallas and the Irish Church Missions, with the Anglican philanthropist and proselytiser Mrs Ellen Smyly, helped set up schools and homes in Townsend St., Dublin (John Casey the father of the playwright Sean O'Casey worked here).
For 20 years the ICM also sponsored a pamphlet Erin's Hope produced by The Smyly Homes and edited by a worker there, Sarah Davies.
Serious physical and sexual abuse of children was carried out, acknowledged, and apologised for at Manor House Home, Lisburn, Northern Ireland, run by Irish Church Missions.
The history section of the ICM website states that during the 19th century the organisation formally distanced itself from the Order, though a number of the Society's Scripture Readers were members.
[19] However, this distance appears hard to reconcile with the fact that in the twentieth century TC Hammond, Superintendent of the ICM, was a prominent member of the Order.
"[25]: 15:22 Others angry at the institutions' apologies included Caroline Farry, who attended St Joseph's Training School in Middletown from 1978 to 1981, overseen by nuns from the Sisters of St Louis,[25]: 15:04 Pádraigín Drinan from Survivors of Abuse,[25]: 14:55 and Alice Harper, whose brother, a victim of the De La Salle Brothers, had since died.
[25]: 14:55 Peter Murdock, from campaign group Savia, was at Nazareth Lodge Orphanage with his brother (who had recently died); he likened the institution to an "SS camp".
The organisation has recently welcomed the framework announced by the Vatican for the transfer of certain groups of Anglo-Catholics as a means of advancing their aims.
ICM is highly critical of the direction of its former church, accusing it of developing a liberal identity which they believe 'has nothing to offer Irish society'.