The Deirdre O'Shaughnessy Podcast: Paving over Bessborough's missing babies

Survivors and relatives express anger after planning permission granted for apartments on site linked to hundreds of infant deaths

Anger after apartments approved for site of Cork’s Bessborough mother and baby home where hundreds of babies died.

The granting of planning permission last week for 140 apartments on the site of Cork’s most infamous mother and baby institution has caused deep upset among survivors and relatives of those who were incarcerated in Bessborough.

Hundreds of babies died at Bessborough between 1922 and 1994, and the Mother and Baby Homes Commission found they were most likely buried on the sprawling grounds of the former institution. Their bodies have never been located, yet there are now plans to build on the site.

Donal O’Keeffe, a reporter with the Irish Examiner and the Echo, was the first to uncover the names of all those babies born at the home whose deaths were registered there or shortly after discharge. The names appeared on an Irish Examiner front page that received worldwide coverage on January 13, 2021.

Despite this, and despite the excavation currently under way at the Tuam institution, no dig is planned at Bessborough. Taoiseach Micheál Martin said in the Dáil this week that he believes Cork City Council should have acquired the site for recreational and memorial purposes.

In today’s episode of the Deirdre O'Shaughnessy Podcast, Donal recounts the history of the institution, including an infant mortality rate of up to 80% in the 1940s, and the campaign by survivors to memorialise their lost relatives, as well as the latest planning development.