IRELAND
Irish Examiner
By Victoria White
WHEN is a dead baby in an unmarked grave not a dead baby in an unmarked grave? When it’s a Protestant baby!
The Tuam “babies in the septic tank” scandal and the media hysteria which culminated in the Government’s frantic announcement of an statutory inquiry into mother and baby homes show how carefully we choose what we remember and when.
It is four long years since the academic Niall Meehan found records which led to 222 unmarked graves of babies and young children who died in the Protestant-run Bethany home in the Dublin suburb of Rathgar.
Last July survivors of the home were refused redress by this Government, a decision which the Government said was “based on an examination of the human suffering involved and no other criteria.” Alan Shatter told the survivors that the State would pay for a “modest” memorial to those 222 innocents who died of exactly the same causes — infection and hunger — as the Tuam babies.
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