Tuam grave exhumation: 'Deeply emotional' day for families as dig finally gets under way

After 11 years of campaigning, the grounds of the former institution will be excavated in the hope of finding the 796 children who died there from 1925 to 1961. Picture: Eamonn Farrell / RollingNews.ie

The site of the former Tuam mother and baby home has now been sealed off to members of the public and will remain closed for at least two years for the first ever mass grave exhumation in Ireland.

Containers, diggers, hoarding, and blockades now encompass the inner grounds of the Dublin Road housing estate, where the former Bons Secours-run mother and baby home operated for 40 years.

From 9am on Monday, a team of construction workers under the direction of the Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention, Tuam (ODAIT) loaded in equipment ahead of the mass grave exhumation.

Peter Mulryan and Selina Brogan of ODAIT at the site of the former mother and baby institution in Tuam. Picture: Andrew Downes

All entrances into the playground, car park, and memorial garden are now blocked off with large black hoarding, as white steel containers were loaded into the grounds via diggers all day.

After 11 years of campaigning, the grounds of the former institution will be excavated in the hope of finding the 796 children who died there from 1925 to 1961.

All day in temperatures of up to 20C, a team of workers in hard hats climbed ladders, chaining containers to diggers, and load-in equipment into the cordoned off area as neighbours, campaigners, and survivors watched on.

This is the beginning of the search for truth for the families of the children who have campaigned for more than a decade to have their loved ones taken out of the sewage tank where they were buried.

Peter Mulryan, aged 80 from Galway, who is a survivor of the Tuam mother and baby home and has a younger sister Marian who died in the home, was there from the early hours to see the beginning of the works.

He found out about Marian’s existence in 2014 — she was listed as one of the children who died in the home.

Mr Mulryan — who is also a member of the advisory committee to the ODAIT, Daniel MacSweeney — also learned by chance in recent years he has an older sister too.

Speaking to the Irish Examiner, he said he felt “deeply emotional” as the construction team began their work.

“I feel I will be able to sleep better at night now” he said. “Just that something is being done, they are finally in there.

“So many of us were judged for being in there. My mother had three children out of marriage, which was considered so shameful and that is how I grew up, all this shame.

Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention, Tuam staff at the former mother and baby institution in Tuam, Co Galway, on Monday. Picture: Andrew Downes

“I am hoping it [the exhumation] will be straightforward. I am happier that it has finally come to fruition because it has been so frustrating these past 11 years.

“I was here early this morning to watch them putting up the hoarding. I rang my wife Kathleen, who has been with me all these years with my children. 'This is emotional'," I told her."

He said despite the start of construction works, he still has some reservations.

“I am afraid to build up my hopes. There has been too many let-downs with all of this.

“I am waiting to find my sister, and hopefully it will give me the answers I have looked for. I have been waiting 11 years for the truth.

“Hopefully, I might be able to sleep properly when I find out one way or the other. But it is a moving time to see this finally unfold, we worked so hard to get to this point”.

Trucks delivering equipment and barriers being erected at the site of the former mother and baby home. Picture: Andrew Downes

Marian Mulryan is recorded as having died in the Tuam mother and baby home in February 1955, nine months after she was born there.

Mr Mulryan took a High Court challenge against the Child and Family Agency in 2017 to try and compel the State to provide all of her documentation.

I really hope that this exhumation will give us all the answers. I have given my DNA, and I hope we understand the truth. I would like to give her a proper burial if she is found.

In 2022, the Institutions Burials Act was passed to allow for the first ever exhumation to take place.

It is hoped other grounds in mother and baby homes across the country, where up to 9,000 children died during their operations, will now also be found.

The names of the children in Tuam were discovered by local historian Catherine Corless, who was researching the home and the tiny children’s memorial garden, to which locals paid respect by tending to it for decades.

The exhumation will take place in five phases beginning near the car park first. Special temperature-controlled units will be onsite to store any remains that are found.

The last section of the area to be excavated will be the memorial garden where in 2017 a significant quantity of children’s remains dated from the home, were uncovered during test excavations on site.

It is hoped the children can be given a respectful and dignified burial when they are found.