Bessborough: Expert cannot rule out more human remains on site earmarked for apartments

The entrance to Bessborough Centre in Cork.

The potential for unrecorded 20th-century human remains at a site in Bessborough earmarked for apartments cannot be discounted, an expert forensic archaeologist has said.

Dr Niamh McCullagh’s assessment of the site is contained in a detailed report she was commissioned to prepare on behalf of developers, MWB Two, as part of their planning application for 92 apartments on the grounds of the former mother and baby home estate in Cork.

A planning decision is due within days.

Several submissions on the planning file from survivor support groups and from elected representatives have called for the application to be rejected pending a full forensic archaeological examination of the site.

The Mother and Baby Home Commission of Investigation reported that between 1922 and 1998, some 923 children died while resident in Bessborough.

But it was only able to locate 64 of these burials. The final resting place of 859 infants remains unknown.

Survivor groups believe many are buried within Bessborough in unmarked graves.

Planning refused

In May 2021, MWB Two was refused planning by Cork City Council and by An Bord Pleanála for a larger apartment scheme on roughly the same site because it overlapped an area marked on a 1950’s Ordnance Survey (OSi) trace map as a ‘Children's Burial Ground’.

It played a key role in the planning refusal following a three-day Bord Pleanala oral hearing.

But in this second planning application on lands next to this sensitive area, MWB Two says conditions could be attached to a grant of planning which would guarantee a precautionary approach to development, with specified forensic archaeological monitoring controls in place.