In January 2021, Ireland’s Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes released its final report, the culmination of a five-year investigation into the conditions and operation of these infamous homes.
It found that between Irish independence in 1922 and 1998, when the last institution closed, 56,000 unmarried mothers and 57,000 children had been housed within these institutions. About nine thousand babies born in them had died. (Roughly one in seven – almost double the mortality rate of the illegitimate babies in the general population.)
