Adoption campaigners: Bessborough questions need to be answered

Adoption rights campaigners have said “serious questions” need to be answered as to why concerns raised by the HSE about Bessborough Mother and Baby Home in 2012 were not acted upon at the time.

A number of adoption groups, human rights bodies, and politicians were reacting to the report, which expressed concerns that death records may have been falsified so children could be “brokered in clandestine adoption arrangements” at home and abroad.

It also revealed that, between 1934 and 1953, a total of 478 children are listed as having died in the institution.