The Moriarty Tribunal, into certain ‘Payments to Politicians and Related Matters’, was established in 1997 and took nearly 14 years to reach its conclusions — and even after that decade-plus commitment to thoroughness some of its findings remain contested and are still the subject of Supreme Court proceedings.

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 religious order which owns the Bessborough campus in Cork City is in for a multi-million euro windfall after it confirmed it is to put the site up for sale.

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.

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.

Adoption groups have called for “a full criminal investigation” into the alteration of files relating to vaccine trials at Bessborough Mother and Baby Home.

One of the victims of the Bessborough vaccine trial is to make a formal Garda complaint after it emerged files were altered in 2002.

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.

Underage girls, pregnant as a result of rape, ended up in Cork’s Bessborough Mother and Baby Home into the 1980s. The ages are revealed in maternity registers kept by the order which ran the home and released under Freedom of Information.

A previously unpublished report by the HSE in 2012 examined Bessborough’s own records. The in-depth findings and conclusions are damning. Conall Ó Fátharta reports