Councillor tells of personal connection to Bessborough

A woman has spoken publicly for the first time of how she was born in a mother and baby home and then visited the same place 17 years later after discovering she was pregnant.

Members of Cork County Council listened in silence as Cllr Mary Linehan-Foley gave a moving account of her association with the mother and baby home at Bessborough, which was run by the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary.

“I was one of the lucky ones,” the Independent councillor told colleagues about the aftermath of her birth at Bessborough in 1966.