Public told 'bring a shovel' to protest excavation delay at Tuam Mother and Baby Home

Catherine Corless and Margaret Gannon at the vigil 'A Little Light of Love', at Lough Lannagh in Castlebar, Co Mayo, last November, in memory of all the children who died in the Tuam Mother and Baby Home. Picture: Alison Laredo

The sister of one of the babies believed to be buried in a mass grave in Tuam, Co Galway, has called on the public to “bring a shovel” to the site to protest delays over the excavation.

Annette McKay’s sister Mary Margaret O’Connor is one of 796 children who died at the mother and baby home while in the care of the Bon Secours order and Galway County Council.

Annette is a leading member of the Tuam Babies Family Group which has been demanding that the state fully excavate the controversial site which made international headlines in 2014.

It was revealed then that the children were buried in a septic tank in the middle of a housing estate and left there after the nuns left Tuam.

Posting online, Ms McKay asked supporters to meet at the Correlea Hotel in Tuam at 11am on June 25, where they will then walk to the Tuam site.

She said: “We gather to demand action to exhume the babies abandoned in the septic tank at Tuam Mother and Baby Home. Bring a shovel, we won’t be digging, but we need to show digging is what we need."

Speaking to the Irish Examiner Ms McKay said: “I want some answers, I am sick of the story of babies lying in a tank. We were promised by the former Minister for Children Katherine Zappone that this exhumation would happen in 2022.

“Then Roderic O’Gorman said it would be this year, but that is clearly not going to happen. We are sick and tired of waiting on reports, delays, legislation, and discussions that do not put the families at the heart of this exhumation.

“We are just told this is happening, but we are not part of the decisionmaking process. We are not there at the heart of it all. The families and survivor are just being informed and that is not good enough," she said.

The appointment comes after historian Catherine Corless from Tuam uncovered the names of the 796 children who died in the religious run home from 1921 to 1925.

Her work led to the setting of a commission of inquiry into mother and baby homes which concluded in 2021.

However, itis nine years since the discovery of the babies’ names.

Test excavations at the site in 2016 on foot of research by Ms Corless found a “significant quantity of human remains” of children from the institution aged between 35 foetal weeks and two to three years.

Annette’s sister, Mary Margaret O’Connor, is one of the children reported to have died there at six months from whooping cough in 1943.

The proposed rally comes just two weeks after the announcement that Daniel MacSweeney will be director of the proposed Tuam exhumation.

In a statement to the Irish Examiner this week regarding the new director of the proposed excavation at Tuam, the Department of Children said: “On 23 May, minister O’Gorman announced the appointment of Mr Daniel MacSweeney as director of authorised intervention, Tuam. Mr MacSweeney heads up the independent office that has been established under the Institutional Burials Act 2022 to oversee the important and highly sensitive work of ensuring the children’s remains at the site of the former mother and baby institution in Tuam are recovered and re-interred in a respectful and appropriate way.

“It is important that the newly-appointed independent director has time to properly assess the situation and develop a plan before setting out timelines for the excavation."