The focus on one institution — Tuam — and one issue — baby deaths — has proved to be convenient for the Government but the spotlight needs to shift to the glaring elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about. The issue will simply not go away, writes Conall Ó Fátharta.

Children from the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home, some of whom died as late as 1990, are buried in unmarked graves in a Cork City cemetery.

Latest: Children's Minister Katherine Zappone tonight updated the Dáil on the progress of the Commission of Investigation, saying the final report was now due in February next year.

Survivors of Magdalene Laundries and Mother and Baby Homes in the North are being encouraged to come forward and share their experience with a working group investigating the institutions.

The volunteer historian who uncovered details of a mass grave at the former Mother and Baby Home in Tuam has been honoured as a "fearless campaigner for human rights".

Former residents of the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home in Cork have been assured that plans to sell it will not affect the power of the Commission to examine the site.

The HSE has refused to say why concerns about infant deaths and possible trafficking from Bessborough in Cork and the Tuam Mother and Baby Home were not reported to the then health minister.

Further geophysical surveys will begin this month at the site of the former Mother and Baby Home in Tuam in County Galway.

A previously unknown trial of lactose and baby formula was carried out using infants in Bessborough Mother and Baby Home by Glaxo Laboratories in the mid-1970s.

I am determined that any action must respect the memory and dignity of the deceased children who lived their short lives in this home, writes Katherine Zappone.

People from the town of Tuam have gathered for a vigil at the Mother and Baby Home there in memory of the children whose remains have been discovered at the site.

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.

Church of Ireland Bishop Paul Colton was so moved by the experience of a survivor of the Westbank orphanage that he has called for all Protestant homes to be included in the Mother and Baby Home investigation.

May I take this opportunity of drawing to the Taoiseach’s attention, that given the recent deluge of information which is emerging with reference to the Mother and Baby Home at Tuam, Co. Galway, it is becoming imperative that the Government finally takes action to face up to this shocking episode in the history of the State.

FILES relating to controversial vaccine trials carried out on children at a Mother and Baby Home run by the Sacred Heart Convent in Bessboro in Cork will not be transferred to the HSE.

THOUSANDS of adopted people will be blocked from independently accessing their birth records under a new computerised public record system, an adoption group warned yesterday.