Report on Tuam Mother and Baby Home Expected This Summer

Galway Independent
June 1, 2016

http://www.galwayindependent.com/news/topics/articles/2016/06/01/4120787-report-on-tuam-mother-and-baby-home-expected-this-summer/

An interim report into the Mother and Baby Homes, including the former facility in Tuam, is expected to be completed this August.

The report is being compiled by the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation and will be issued to the government later in the summer.

The commission was set up to investigate 14 Mother and Baby Homes around the country, including the one in Tuam, which was open from 1925 to 1961.

The commission had called for people who were residents or who worked in any of the homes to come forward and invited people with personal knowledge about the homes, for example family members of residents, regular visitors or those who supplied services to the homes, to also come forward.

Confidential interviews with those who have come forward are ongoing. A spokesperson for the commission explained, “This investigation is being conducted in private and people who are interviewed are guaranteed confidentiality.”

Local historian Catherine Corless, who uncovered the ‘Tuam Babies’ story, said she still meets with survivors of the Tuam Home, which was run by Bon Secours. “A lot of new people have come on board. All of them are looking for an acknowledgment and apology for what happened in the homes. My research into finding families for them goes on. Everyone really is kept in the dark, as if it is none of their business.”

Research carried out by Ms Corless revealed that 796 children, most of them infants, died between 1925 and 1961, the 36 years that the Tuam Home was open. She also discovered that there were no burial records for the children and that they had not been interred in any of the local public cemeteries. Her research concluded that many of the children were buried in an unofficial graveyard on the site.

Former residents and relatives of people who died in the Mother and Baby Home in Tuam have formed a group in the hope that collectively they will have more impact to get justice for their loved ones.