Burial ground memorial site agreed with HSE as county archive talks progress - Mother and Baby Homes Report
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Kilkenny County Council have issued a formal apology to the victims and survivors of Thomastown County Home and have proposed a remembrance memorial be built on the site.
Kilkenny County Council Chairman Andrew McGuinness issued the apology at Monday’s meeting of Kilkenny County Council and confirmed that prior agreement for the location of the memorial at the former Mother and Baby Home has been obtained from the HSE.
“We welcome further contributions and suggestions from survivors,” he said, after delivering the formal apology.
South East Correspondent
Kilkenny County Council has apologised to survivors and their relatives of the Kilkenny County Home, one of the institutions criticised last week by the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes and certain related matters.
Hundreds of women and their children went through the council-owned county home in Thomastown - now St Columba s Hospital - between the 1920s and 1960s and endured conditions described as very poor .
The women themselves were often put working as domestic staff in the home, unpaid, with duties including caring for elderly and infirm residents who lived alongside them.
Over half of the women who lived there lost a child either in the home, or outside it, during the period examined by the Commission.
Kilkenny County Council issues apology for pain and suffering endured at Thomastown County Home We, as elected representatives, are deeply ashamed, Chairman Andrew McGuinness
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Kilkenny County Council Chairman Andrew McGuinness issued an apology today on behalf of all Kilkenny County Council elected members, both current and past, from all parties and none, to the victims and survivors of Thomastown County Home.
The apology, supported by all Council members in attendance, was made in light of the Final Report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes . It is our desire, duty, and obligation, to apologise unreservedly, to the mothers and babies, survivors and deceased and their relatives and families, for the pain and suffering caused by the treatment they received at the Kilkenny County Home while it was under the control of Kilkenny County Council, Chairman McGuinness said.
Nuns treated 11-year-old rape victims as if they were prostitutes : How schoolgirls were among 56,000 mothers sent to hellish Irish homes where 9,000 babies died and bodies were buried in shoeboxes - as survivors slam cop-out report
Some 56,000 unmarried mothers and 57,000 children went to hellish Mother and Baby homes in Ireland
Commission of Investigation found that 15 percent of the children died between 1922 and 1998
Report pointed the blame at families and fathers who turned their backs on the unmarried, pregnant women
The very high mortality rates were known to local and national authorities and were officially recorded
Many of the women were forced to seek refuge in the homes for fear of the their families and neighbours discovering their pregnancies
Shocking legacy of Kilkenny County Home - Mother and Baby Home Commission Report
Poor conditions and high infant mortality in Thomastown facility revealed
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Shocking details of ‘a shameful chapter’ of Irish history reveal 177 babies died in just 38 years at the Kilkenny County Home.
Their individual graves are unmarked and many institutional records have been destroyed. It has also been revealed that many Kilkenny mothers were sent to the now infamous Bessborough home in Cork and Sean Ross Abbey in Tipperary, from the County Home.
The heartbreaking figures reflecting the stories of mothers and their babies have been set out in the final report of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission, published on Tuesday.