Campaigner: Getting information from nuns 'like penetrating iron curtain'

An adoption rights campaigner has compared getting information on deaths at mother and baby homes to "trying to penetrate the iron curtain".

Government efforts are underway to find out what happened 800 babies and children whose remains are buried in a disused septic tank beside a former home in Tuam, County Galway.

The Archbishop of Tuam, Michael Neary, is calling on the Bon Secours Sisters to "act upon their responsibilities" in the wake of the discovery - the order ran the home up to the 1960's.

Susan Lohan from the Adoption Rights Alliance says that in other cases, records have been very hard to get because there has "been a long-established procedure of keeping the records closed".