‘I found remains while digging grave’

A maintenance worker employed in Bessborough in the late 1980s and early 1990s has spoken of how he came across child remains while burying the bodies of two nuns.

Eugene Kelly, from Cork, worked as maintenance man at the former mother-and-baby home and adoption society in Blackrock between 1984 and 1992 and recalls coming across “little skulls and little bones” as he buried two nuns in the small graveyard on the site.

“I was only asked then when Timmy [who operated the farm] was getting too old, when he was semi-retired, would I bury a few of the nuns? I said ‘No problem’ — it was an adventure to me, I was only 19 or 20 at the time. It frightened the bejaysus out of me the first time.