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Names of some of the children who died at the Tuam Mother and Baby Home, as seen at the shrine which stands on a mass burial site, formerly part of the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home (Getty Images)
In 2014, historian Catherine Corless made headlines with the findings that up to 796 children’s bodies lay in an unmarked mass grave in a septic tank on the former grounds of a Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, County Galway, Ireland.
While national Irish media were slow to take Corless seriously, the robust nature of her evidence prompted a survey of the site of the grave and proved her correct. A commission of investigation into Ireland’s Mother and Baby Homes was launched in 2015. On Tuesday, it delivered its final report.
Opposition parties criticise content of State apology
Updated / Wednesday, 13 Jan 2021
16:51
The site where the former Tuam mother-and-baby home was located
Opposition politicians have criticised the content and timing of the State apology to survivors of mother-and-baby homes delivered by the Taoiseach in the Dáil.
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said survivors have waited a long time to hear an apology, but it was untrue to say it was simply a failure of empathy and compassion in Irish society. More profoundly it was an abuse of power, an abuse of authority. It was a brutality inflicted on women and girls, and on the poor in particular, she said.
Yesterday was a day of mixed emotions for the survivors of Mother and Baby Homes.
After five years, the report of the Commission was finally published. It was a very long process from which many survivors and their advocates felt excluded and ignored.
Still, there was slight hope that the publication of the report would bring truth and real accountability.
For many those hopes were dashed. Sadly, many survivors are upset, deflated and angry by some of what they have read in the report.
The assertions that there were no forced adoptions, that there exists little evidence of physical abuse and the overarching attempt to shift responsibility from the State and churches has left survivors shocked and some outraged.
9,000 children died in Irish homes for unwed mothers over nearly 80 years, report finds TODAY 1/12/2021 Yuliya Talmazan and Adela Suliman and Helena Skinner
Some 9,000 children died in Ireland s church-run homes for unwed mothers, a government report published on Tuesday found. This is equivalent to 15 percent of all children who were born or lived in the 18 institutions investigated over nearly 80 years.
The nearly 3,000-page report describes the emotional and even physical abuse some of the 56,000 unmarried mothers from farmhands to domestic servants were subjected to in the so-called mother-and-baby homes. It appears that there was little kindness shown to them and this was particularly the case when they were giving birth, the report said.
Ireland 'must face up to the past,' Taoiseach says on release of report into the of abuse of unwed mothers morningstaronline.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from morningstaronline.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.