Protest over Cork apartment plan told Bessborough site 'is not just land'

Senator Alice Higgins addressing the protest outside Leinster House against the construction of residential apartments on the site of Bessborough mother and baby home in Cork. Picture: Sam Boal/Collins

A protest outside Leinster House on Wednesday was told that the Bessborough mother and baby home site is "not an empty field waiting to be filled".

Campaigners attempting to stop the construction of a 140‑unit apartment development on the grounds of the former Cork mother and baby home were joined by politicians and families for the 'No Building Over Bessborough' rally.

More than 850 babies who died there remain unaccounted for, and the Commission of Inquiry said they are most likely on the vast grounds where they were born.

Some of the supporters wept throughout the rally, while others held up placards saying, “stop the development” and “find the babies”.

One of the speakers at the event was Carmel Cantwell, whose mother, Madeleine Bridget Marvier, was locked up in the home when she was 17 and gave birth to a baby boy, William, who died.

She said: “I stand here not only as a family member or someone connected to Bessborough, but as a voice for those who cannot speak to themselves, the mothers, the children and the generations whose lives were shaped and, in many cases, shattered by what happened on these grounds.

“Bessborough is not just land. It is not an empty field waiting to be filled. It is a place of memory, of loss, of unanswered questions.

“It is the landscape that holds the stories of thousands of women and children who pass through the gates, many of whom never came home. Hundreds of children who died here have no known burial place.” 

Terri Harrison also spoke at the event and described how as a teenager she was “abducted” from London and brought to Bessborough, where her son Niall was taken away and adopted.

She was one of the campaigners who successfully opposed the previous development plans at Bessborough and addressed the crowd saying: “And here we are again”.

“These people who run this country… they don't give a damn,” she said.

“They want us to die off, shut up and go away. I was one of the first people who went up against An Bord Pleanála five years ago, and I was cross-examined by the state solicitor, the barrister, the developer, and we won, we celebrated.

“Now here we are again. I will never stop, but I don’t mind anymore about this lot [in the Dáil] because they will never hear us.”

People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett, who was born in a mother and baby home in London and later adopted, said he and his birth mother, actress Sinead Cusack, went looking for his place of birth at Christmas.

“I was lucky in that 38 years after we were separated by the church and state regime, she found me, and we were reunited.

“We went looking for the mother and baby home I was born, which was somewhere in Highgate. But she couldn't remember because she was so traumatised at the time. I obviously wanted to see where I was born." 

Mr Boyd Barrett said they did not find the home, but it is "part of my history and that's part of my identity". 

“If that matters to me, my history, my identity and my heritage...how much more important is it to respect the 859 children who disappeared, who we don’t know where they are, what happened to them, but who lost their lives in these dark institutions.”