Picture this: You are what is now termed as a survivor of a mother and baby home, you don’t know exactly who you are, you have no identity because the State had decided long ago that you have no right of ever knowing or finding who gave birth to you.
That right had been given to a group of social workers called Tusla, who hold your file from the time your mother gave birth to you in a mother and baby home.
You have been scorned most of your life as a sub-species, because according to the Church you were born into sin, you are illegitimate, born outside marriage.
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Now picture this: A story breaks in the national media in 2014 of the discovery of hundreds of baby skeletal remains in a sewage system on the grounds of the Tuam mother and baby home.
A shiver runs down your back as you realise this is where you were born, and you visualise that this could have been your fate. Then you note a list of all 796 babies and children who died in the home, taking up a full page in the newspapers.
Your own surname appears at various stages in the list, and you wonder, just wonder could you possibly be related.
For those of us who have been regarded as legitimate, because our parents have a marriage certificate, we can only imagine what it was like for the thousands of people who were labelled illegitimate.
For me, I have had the privilege of meeting up with so many of them, and more so, I was in a position to help them and bring them some peace of mind in finding the information they so desperately needed.
My research into the Tuam Mother & Baby Home began over a decade ago, when I simply started out to write an essay for the local historical journal.
I was not aware, then, that my life was about to take an unexpected turn and that I would be catapulted into unknown territory.
I was never a media person, never talkative, I always sought a background area where I could work quietly at whatever I was doing, and was quite content with that.
It was through shock, horror and disbelief in what my research revealed about the home and how it was run, that I realised I had to do something about it.
Crowning it all was the discovery that nearly 800 babies and young children had died there in the years 1925-1961, and worse still, there were no medical records for them or even a burial record.
I struggled over many months in the early stages of my research to get answers to my queries of Why? Where? How?
I contacted the Bon Secour Sisters who had run the home, now in their Cork headquarters, but was advised that they had no records and that they were handed over to Galway County Council.
They also denied any knowledge of any burials on the grounds of the Tuam Home, although two of their elderly Sisters, still living, had been in the home at that time.
The CEO of Galway County Council informed me they had handed them over to the Western Health Board.
On contacting them I was told they only had the Tuam Home Register, now in possession of Tusla, in Merlin Park Galway, but added there would be no burial records included. By this time, the media had come on board and the story of Tuam was hitting the headlines with “800 babies missing in Tuam, believed to be buried in a sewage system”, which in turn prodded the Government to take note.
Finally they set up a Commission of Inquiry into the Tuam Home and the other mother and baby homes throughout Ireland, along with some of the county homes.
This inquiry, headed by Judge Yvonne Murphy, supposedly was to last for three years, but it stretched into six, costing €11million. They issued their final report in January 2021, which was a total disaster, with survivors left disillusioned, disappointed and in despair.
There was no mention of accountability from any quarters for what happened in those homes, the report almost bordered along the lines of “those were the times we lived in”.
One positive result was that the inquiry had at least done a test excavation in 2016 on the site of the sewage system, and had found multiple skeletal remains in the chambers of the sewage tank, and had carbon dated them to the time of the Tuam Home.
A public announcement in March 2017 by Minister Katherine Zappone, stated the shock and horror felt by the Government that babies and young children could be buried thus. I was elated at this, as my research was proven to be true, but still as the months passed, nothing happened, the whole site was closed in and left as it was, despite the archaeologists insisting that the remains be removed within six months.
Another five years on, and the babies still await exhumation and a Christian burial.
At least with the new Minister for Children, Roderic O’Gorman, a positive move has been made with the passing of a Burials’ Bill last June, which the Government insisted was needed for a mass exhumation.
The position of a director has now been advertised, to oversee the excavation, exhumation, forensic testing of the remains, and the gathering of DNA for relatives to finally to give the children the dignified burial denied them. This is earmarked for early 2023.
There has been a struggle for birthrights by many adoption groups over the years; these will now be entitled to their full files from Tusla, along with those that were fostered, and they will finally get their health records and all the little details so important to them of their early years in the home.
This came about from the Adoption Bill passed earlier this year. Also in place is a redress scheme.
Apologies did come after the final report was issued, from the Government, Church and Religious, for which we were grateful, but it is a shame that we still have to keep up the fight for closure.
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