State archives: Kerry Babies tribunal sought truth behind terrible tragedy

THE discovery of a newborn’s body on a beach and a family’s alleged confession they had killed a baby days earlier and put the body into the sea led to the Kerry Babies Tribunal.

The tribunal began sitting in Tralee on January 7, 1985.

It was inquiring into how Joanne Hayes of Abbeydorney and members of her family had confessed to killing a baby washed up on a beach near Cahirciveen.

Ms Hayes had given birth to a baby two days earlier but it emerged it had been buried on the family farm.

The blood types of the two dead babies did not match, so it was most unlikely that the two babies were twins.

Joanne Hayes with friends at the Kerry Babies Tribunal, Tralee, CoKerry. Picture: Michael Mac Sweeney/Provision

After the Director of Public Prosecutions ordered that a murder charge against members of the Hayes family be dropped, the Garda Commissioner had two senior gardaí investigate the force’s handling of the case.

On the basis of the report, the Commissioner notified the Minister for Justice, who informed the cabinet the “report clearly indicates that the officers conducting the criminal investigation into the death of the Cahirciveen baby were grossly negligent in their handling of the case and he considers that some form of sworn inquiry is required to establish what really happened”.

As a result, the government set up a judicial tribunal under Justice Kevin Lynch.

The media seemed captivated during the initial days of the tribunal.

Reports read like they could have been extracts from a banned Irish novel of the 1950s.

The daily reports made the front pages of all the national newspapers.

“Father of Kerry baby named,” the Cork Examiner noted.

Supporters of Joanne Hayes at the Kerry Babies Tribunal, Tralee, Co Kerry. Picture: Michael Mac Sweeney/Provision

“Joanne Hayes ‘sat on detective’s lap’,” the Irish Times proclaimed.

“Tribunal hears of love affair in a mini,” ran an Irish Independent

heading, while an Irish Press headline said: “Joanne love letter read to Tribunal.”

John Sayers from Tipperary wrote a couple of indignant letters to the Taoiseach’s office.

In the first of those, on January 8, which was the second day of the tribunal, he complained about “the repetitive, blatant, savage and inhuman publicity”.

“As a person who is deeply and passionately proud of my Kerry heritage, I request that this publicity cease forthwith,” he added.

A week later, he asked the Taoiseach’s department “to curb and control the continuing offensive publicity” in the Sunday newspapers, as well as the “sordid exposition of sexual aspects of this case, on daily news bulletins on radio and television”.

The case was expected to last for 21 days, but it continued for 82 days.

In his report in early October, Mr Justice Lynch concluded that Ms Hayes was definitely not the mother of the baby found in Cahirciveen.

She had given birth in her own bedroom a month early.

The baby was having trouble breathing but no attempt was made to secure medical assistance.

It was obviously a very stressful situation.

Joanne Hayes’ mother, along with an aunt and sister, rebuked her for having another baby with Jeremiah Locke.

She had already had a daughter out of wedlock with him.

Her mother had complained about having to rear another child.

“Joanne Hayes got into a panic and as the baby cried again she put her hands around its neck and stopped it by choking it,” the tribunal report noted.

“At some stage during the course of these events, Joanne Hayes used the bath brush from the bathroom to hit the baby to make sure that it was dead.”

In his 274-page report, the judge concluded that gardaí had grounds for being suspicious that Ms Hayes might have been the mother of the Cahirciveen baby, and hence they had a duty to investigate her.

He further concluded they had not physically abused her, or any member of her family.

But all were intimidated by their own mistaken belief that they were being held in custody at the Garda station.

It was under the pressure of this mistaken assumption that they made the false statements, associating themselves with the Cahirciveen baby.

They admitted to throwing the baby into sea off Dingle.

The judge was particularly critical of the gardaí for their “deplorably inadequate” search for the dead baby on the Hayes farm.

Their initial failure to find the body was “inexcusable”, the judge concluded.

He also blamed gardaí for resorting “to unlikely, far-fetched and self-contradictory theories,” such as the superfecundation theory, in accordance with which twins were born to Joanne Hayes by different fathers.

There was a further argument that “the Cahirciveen Baby was not one of those twins”, but “a third baby with injuries similar to those of the Cahirciveen Baby thrown into the Atlantic Ocean off the Dingle peninsula”.

Subsequently, there were extensive transfers within the Garda Technical Bureau but the Justice Minister, Michael Noonan, insisted those were not disciplinary measures.

The minister confirmed that the Commissioner had informed him that, in the interests of the force, he had considered it right and indeed necessary to transfer from their present posts most of the those who were assigned from the Technical Bureau to the Kerry Babies investigation.