IRELAND
Herald

BY ALAN O’KEEFFE AND RALPH RIEGEL – 09 JUNE 2014

DEATH rates at a Dublin mother-and-baby home were almost as high as mortality rates at the Bon Secours home in Tuam, recently released records held by church authorities have revealed.

The Dublin death rates are coming to light as official inquiries by gardai and a number of Government departments get underway into the deaths of almost 800 children at the Tuam home in a 36-year period ending in 1961.

Documents that belonged to former Dublin Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, who died in 1973, show that St Patrick’s mother and baby home at Pelletstown in Cabra also had high death rates in at least one year. The records show that one in every three babies died in the home on the Navan road in 1933.

Convent

The Pelletstown death rate was 34pc in that year while, at the…