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Joan McDermott was 16 and fresh out of boarding school when she met her boyfriend Tony, a medical student, in their rural hometown in County Cork, Ireland. Together for about a year, they had sex twice. She fell pregnant.
âI honestly didnât know that was how you got a baby,â says Joan, now 73 and living in the small coastal town of Cobh in Cork. âWhen I told my mother I was three monthsâ pregnant, she said to go upstairs and pack a small bag; Iâd be going away. Then she stood in the hallway while I rang my boyfriend. His family ran a well-known local business; he said he was sorry but that he could do nothing for me.â
Historian Catherine Corless has written to the Taoiseach calling for legislation to allow the exhumation of babies “buried in a sewage system” at Tuam to be passed urgently.
Dublin Correspondent
Dublin City Council has become the latest local authority to apologise for its role in the operation of mother-and-baby homes.
Lord Mayor of Dublin Hazel Chu offered her apologies on behalf of Dublin City Council for the running of St Patrick s Mother and Baby Home on the Navan Road.
She said the home had been set up before independence but it had been continued and the women there had been abandoned.
Ms Chu added that they had been forced to give up their children.
Earlier today Mayo County Council apologised for its role in the operation of mother-and-baby homes.
Three-quarters of the deaths happened in the 1930s and 1040s; the worst years were 1943-1947.
The report also acknowledges the horrific, illegal burial of children in a disused sewerage chamber on the home s grounds. No register of burials were kept, and it is likely that most of the children who died in Tuam are buried inappropriately in the grounds of the institution, it notes.
What marks Tuam apart from the other homes detailed in the report is the dire physical conditions that remained for its entire existence.
The report found: Galway County Council failed to properly maintain, much less improve, the conditions.”
Western Correspondent
Galway County Council has said it is profoundly sorry for its failure in relation to the operation and management of the mother-and-baby home in Tuam.
The home was run by the Bon Secours Sisters on behalf of the local authority, between 1925 and 1961.
In a statement at today s council meeting, Chief Executive Kevin Kelly said the authority acknowledged its failures and was willing to hold itself to account for them.
The meeting heard that the council had not given compassion, empathy, support and understanding to women forced to enter the home.
Mr Kelly said the lack of respect and dignity afforded to women and children in death was particularly upsetting. He described this as a source of great hurt and sorrow.