Tuam mother and baby home advisory board to visit burial site next week

The group is advising the Director of the Intervention of the Tuam babies mass grave, Daniel MacSweeney, who will oversee the excavation. Picture: Laura Hutton/RollingNews.ie

Members of the Tuam Advisory Board will travel to the site of the mass grave where 796 children are believed to have been buried at a former mother and baby home in Galway for the first time.

The committee, which consists of six people, including Dublin District Coroner Dr Brian Farrell, will attend the burial area on Wednesday to meet the team of engineers involved in the exhumation.

Legislation to allow for a full excavation of the site, the first of its kind — where hundreds of babies died in the care of the Bons Secours nuns — was passed last year.

The meeting next week will be the fourth official gathering of the advisory board, which first met in January in Dublin, following its appointment by the Department of Children.

The group is advising the Director of the Intervention of the Tuam babies mass grave, Daniel MacSweeney, who will oversee the excavation.

Annette McKay, who is representing the families of the children who died there said: “I will be in Tuam next week with the exhumation advisory board.

“It’s a long, complicated process but good people are fully committed to righting this dreadful wrong.

It’s unconscionable that it’s taken 10 years to get here.” 

Ms McKay’s sister, Mary Margaret O’Connor, died aged six months from whooping cough in 1942 in the former Bons Secours mother and baby home in Tuam, which operated from 1925 to 1961.

The exhumation comes following research by Catherline Corless from Co Galway, who discovered 796 children died in the mother and baby home from 1925 to 1961 during its operation.

However, despite Ms Corless' research making international news, the children who were buried in a disused cesspit remain today.

The exhumation comes following research by Catherline Corless from Co Galway, who discovered 796 children died in the mother and baby home from 1925 to 1961 during its operation. Picture: Hany Marzouk

The advisory board is expected to view the entire site in the middle of the Dublin Road housing estate in Tuam that will be excavated.

No timeline has been provided yet for the exaction but Mr MacSweeney, who will be working under the Institutional Burials Act 2022, told the Irish Examiner in March both he and his team of seven, which includes archaeologist Dr Niamh McCullough, who worked on the test excavations at Tuam in 2016 and 2017, are making “good progress” to date.

“The way the legislation is structured, we will be dealing with families who are close relatives,” he said.

“We have to do a public information campaign, that is about awareness raising.

“The legislation says a family member contacts us and all correspondence is confidential.” 

He said the area where the babies are buried will not be closed off because residents live there, and he would be keeping them informed.

“We want to do this work with the least amount of disruption possible, so that is one of the things we have asked the engineers to look at” he said.

“The expert technical group [who did test excavations on the site in 2016 and 2017], they thought that this entire thing could take two years, so I don’t want to block off this area for two years. So, we will do it in sections.

“We need to have a plan on how we will do this. The scoping engineer will lead to a design engineer will lead to a building contractor who will start this work.

“The second thing is a lab. We have been working with the OPW in Galway. I’ve seen five places in Tuam that can be a lab and we are close to finalising that.

“We need to have a place where the remains can be respectfully and carefully placed.”