It was a miserable day on Sunday in Cork. Rain teemed from a dark and unpleasant sky, the grass underneath turned to mud, there was no respite from the cold.

The report on burials practices in mother and baby homes is to be referred to An Garda Síochána to see if any of the issues raised warrant criminal investigation.

Survivors of the Tuam mother and baby home have said the only way the causes of death of the children who died in the institution can be established is by holding inquests for every child.

The Mother and Baby Homes Commission has said it is “very difficult to comprehend” how the Order which ran Bessborough has no information as to where over 800 children who died in their care are buried.

Cork City Council investigators have visited the site of the former Bessborough mother and baby home to ascertain if the destruction of the historic ‘folly’ near a burial plot warrants an enforcement action.

The almost complete demolition of an historic folly near a burial plot on the grounds of the former Bessborough Mother and Baby Home in Cork has been described as an outrageous attack on the city’s DNA.

A recommendation on the future of children’s remains at the site of the former mother and baby home in Tuam is expected to be announced in early autumn, a meeting in the Co Galway town was told last night.

Survivors of the Tuam mother and baby home have written to Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, the attorney general, and the coroner for north Galway calling for an inquest to be opened into the deaths of children at the home.

The HSE has confirmed that allegations of sexual abuse are among complaints that have come to light about the mistreatment of people at a care service for adults with intellectual disabilities over a 30-year period.

A public appeal for information has been made relating to the burials of a “large number” of children who died in the Bessborough mother and baby home.

The religious order which ran the Sean Ross Abbey mother and baby home has put a large part of the campus up for sale, just six months after placing the Bessborough mother and baby home in Cork on the market.

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.

Previously unseen details of a medical trial by Glaxo in 1974 at a Cork mother and baby home have generated a whole new series of questions for the nuns and the companies involved, writes Conall Ó Fátharta.

Gardaí have forwarded a complaint for the personal attention of the Data Protection Commissioner that files relating to vaccine trials in Bessborough mother and baby home were altered in 2002.

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.

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.

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

There has been “no decision” to carry out excavations on the site of any other mother and baby home other than Tuam — despite the HSE confirming as far back as 2012 that there had been a higher infant death rate in Bessborough in Cork .

A participant in the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home vaccine trial has made a formal Garda complaint after it emerged files relating to the trial were altered in 2002.

A senior HSE social worker revealed in 2011 that Bessborough Mother and Baby Home files contained information on the “quasi-illegal deportation and adoption” of children to the USA, Britain, and Australia.

The religious order that ran the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home reported significantly higher numbers of infant deaths to state inspectors than it recorded privately.

Religious order reported to the State that 353 babies died in Bessborough, but its own register showed 80 fewer deaths. A report found a system of ‘human trafficking’ in which ‘women and babies were considered little more than a commodity for trade’. Conall Ó Fatharta reports

Concerns that death records were falsified in Bessborough Mother and Baby Home so children could “be brokered in clandestine adoption arrangements” at home and abroad were raised in an internal HSE report in 2012.