IRELAND
Department of Children and Youth Affairs
I. Introduction
The Inter Departmental Group was set up in response to revelations and public controversy regarding conditions in Mother and Baby Homes. This controversy originally centred on the high rate of deaths at the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Co. Galway. A local historian, Ms Catherine Corless, sourced details from public records of 796 child deaths, very many of them infants, in this home in the period from 1925 to 1961. There was also considerable anxiety and questions as to the burial arrangements for these infants.
Notwithstanding that Tuam was the original focus of this controversy, related issues of death rates, burial arrangements and general conditions have also been raised with regard to Mother and Baby Homes in other locations.
Shortly after the Inter-Departmental Group was established, Dáil Eireann passed a motion, following a Government sponsored amendment, on 11th June 2014 as follows:
“That Dáil Éireann:
acknowledges the need to establish the facts regarding the deaths of almost 800 children at the Bon Secours Sisters institution in Tuam, County Galway between 1925 and 1961, including arrangements for the burial of these children;
acknowledges that there is also a need to examine other “mother and baby homes” operational in the State in that era;
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