The Government has been asked to “widen its horizons” and offer DNA sampling to all former residents of mother and baby homes and related institutions.

A nuns' burial plot at the grounds of the former Bessborough Mother and Baby Home has been "examined" but no geophysical survey has yet taken place at the site.

Experts are looking at whether there is any legal block to gathering DNA from survivors of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home.

The personal histories and experiences of survivors of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home are to be gathered by researchers at NUI Galway.

There are "no plans at present" to undertake a geophysical survey at the site of the former Bessborough Mother and Baby Home - although investigators have visited the site.

Members of the Tuam Home Survivors Group have lost faith “in the process” after the Government recently granted a one-year extension to the commission, which had been due to report next month.

Further investigations may be carried out into the children’s burial ground at Sean Ross Abbey, depending on the results of the geophysical survey of the site.

The chairperson of the Coalition of Mother & Baby Home Survivors, Paul Redmond is calling on the Government to apologise to survivors and immediately set up a redress scheme.

Campaigners say the State could be in breach of international law for its involvement in the Tuam Mother and Baby home.

The State seems terrified of what might happen if one mass grave is excavated but, without it, the living can never know peace, nor the dead rest, writes Donal O’Keeffe.

Children’s minister Katherine Zappone is requesting a copy of research which states that new advanced genomic technologies should allow for the identification of remains at the site of the former Tuam Mother and Baby Home.

The Adoption Authority of Ireland (AAI) has said it was “not aware” that a formerly accredited adoption agency owned an unmarked grave in which children were buried as late as 1990.

Historian Catherine Corless, whose work led to the discovery of a mass grave in Tuam, argues that the expertise exists to start DNA identification of the babies interred there

A genetics expert said modern forensics could be used to test for DNA at the Tuam mother and baby home site.

The Mother and Baby Homes Commission investigation of Bessborough mother-and-baby home will not be affected by the planned sale of the site.

The McAleese inquiry into Magdalene laundries was informed in 2012 about “disturbing” infant death rates in excess of 50% at the Tuam Mother and Baby Home.

A cross-departmental group is to focus on sourcing international technical experts with a view to providing advice on the future of the site of the mother and baby home in Tuam.

This society’s capacity to turn a blind eye to difficult, sometimes criminal situations is well documented. 

Immediate redress for thousands of unaccompanied children who were in mother and baby homes has been rejected by the Government.

An amnesty from prosecution for those involved in facilitating illegal adoptions has been suggested by the Mother and Baby Homes Commission.

Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald and her department have been accused of misleading the UN by claiming the McAleese report made “no finding” in relation to State liability with regard to Magdalene Laundries.

Philomena Lee has said she is “appalled” by the revelations at Tuam, Co Galway, and said all institutions that dealt with unmarried women need to be examined.

The Archbishop of Tuam says the Mother and Baby Home inquiry should look at society in general, and not just the religious order that ran the institution.

Lands owned by the Catholic Church should be given to the Irish people as a “token of its remorse” to those sexually abused in schools, former Labour leader Ruairi Quinn has said.

The true picture of what happened in Bessborough Mother and Baby Home in Cork may be difficult to hear but it needs to come out, the Bishop of Cloyne, William Crean said yesterday.

Minister for Children Katherine Zappone says she will know within weeks how a proposed broadening of the Commission of Inquiry into Mother and Baby Homes will look, as she noted: “The dead do not lie.”

The Tuam mother and baby home should not be treated as an individual scandal, but as part of a national trafficking network that commodified people, says Conall Ó Fátharta.

As a woman listening, it was so wounding to realise what little value your country has in you, writes Alison O’Connor.

Prof James M Smith says that the Church either knew what was happening in Tuam and did nothing or that its bishops never fulfilled their pastoral duty under Canon Law

The President hopes the commission into mother and baby homes will “put the truth on the record”.

There were 470 infant deaths recorded at the Bessborough home from 1934 to 1953, but the rates recorded internally are lower than those on the State register, writes Conall Ó Fatharta

Mother and baby home campaigners have said as many as 180 institutions that dealt with unmarried mothers and children need to be examined by the commission.

An investigation into mother and baby homes could be widened to take in far more institutions as the Government has ordered a scoping exercise into the scandal.

Infants were taken from their mothers and sold, starved, trafficked, and in some cases denied life itself, Taoiseach Enda Kenny said in relation to the Tuam buried babies scandal.

The names of almost 800 children who died in two of the country’s largest mother and baby homes were given to the HSE by a religious order in 2011.

Grace; the babies of Tuam; the children, in their thousands, sent to industrial schools. Not one of them had anyone to watch over them, writes Fergus Finlay.

Update - 9.30pm: A member of the Cabinet says the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes must be allowed finish its work in relation to the former Bon Secours facility in Tuam.

While the Catholic Church is at the centre of the scandal, both the State and public at large were also complicit, writes Shane Kilcommins.

Identifying the remains of young children at the Tuam Mother and Baby Home would be technically very difficult and the prospect of establishing causes of death highly unlikely, according to forensic and Garda sources.

The Justice Minister says it's 'inevitable' that Gardaí will be involved in the investigation into the discovery of infant remains in County Galway.

Excavations at other mother and baby homes are being demanded after the discovery of “significant quantities” of infant remains at Tuam.

The order that ran the Bessborough mother and baby home has claimed it was instructed in 2013 to destroy “all documents” it held in relation to vaccine trials carried out on children.