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‘No specific plans’ for excavations on the grounds of Mother and Baby Homes

By Conall ó Fátharta
IRELANDIrish Examiner
October 1, 2016

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/no-specific-plans-for-excavations-on-the-grounds-of-mother-and-baby-homes-423705.html


There are “no specific plans” to carry out excavations on the grounds of other Mother and Baby Homes yet, as a preliminary excavation was approved for a site where almost 800 children from the Tuam Mother and Baby Home are reportedly buried.

The Mother and Baby Homes Commission said work will begin on the site from today and continue for approximately five weeks. It will be led by a team of specialist archaeologists under a forensic archaeologist, with the full co-operation of gardaí.

“The purpose of the excavation is to resolve a number of queries that the Mother and Baby Homes Commission has in relation to the interment of human remains at this location,” said a statement.

To date, the site in Tuam is the only site to have been physically examined for remains. Despite evidence of a higher death rate at Bessborough Mother and Baby Home in Cork and deaths in other institutions, the commission said: “There are no specific plans to carry out other excavations yet” at other sites. But it added that “no definite decisions have been made”.

An Irish Examiner investigation last year revealed the HSE had reported concerns in 2012 that up to 1,000 children may have been “trafficked” to the US from the Tuam Mother and Baby Home in “a scandal that dwarfs other, more recent, issues within the Church and State”.

Senior HSE officials advised “that this goes all the way up to the minister” so “a fully fledged, fully resourced forensic investigation and State inquiry” could be launched.

The HSE also informed the Government in 2012 that 478 children died in the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home in Cork between 1934 and 1953, a higher death rate than recorded in Tuam. The figures were taken from the order’s own death register.

It also expressed concerns that deaths may have been falsified. This newspaper also revealed that the order running Bessborough reported significantly higher numbers of infant deaths to state inspectors than it recorded privately. However, an inquiry was not launched by the Government until almost two years later.




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