Mick Clifford: Can excavation of Tuam babies bring closure?

Anna Corrigan, Peter Mulryan, and Annette McKay whose siblings are thought to be buried at the Tuam mother and baby site, took part in a protest in Tuam over delays in the exhumation of the remains. Picture: Andy Newman

This week, the Minister for Children advertised for people to serve on the Advisory Board of Authorised Intervention, Tuam. The board will oversee the excavation at a site in the former mother and baby home run by the Bon Secours nuns in the Co Galway town. The site is a disused sewage tank where the bodies of babies who had died were dumped, deposited, thrown, in the most disrespectful manner when the home was in use. Between 1925 and 1961, 796 babies are recorded as having died in the home, usually soon after birth.

Last Sunday, there was a scheduled protest by a relative of one of the babies. Annette McKay, whose sister died in Tuam, wanted people to gather with shovels to protest at the delay in excavating the site.

Last month, the minister for children Roderic O’Gorman appointed Daniel McSweeney as the director who will head up the independent office for the excavation. The office was created under the Institutional Burials Act 2022, the law which oversees the whole process of excavating former mother and baby homes. Apart from Tuam, it is believed that sites may also exist in places like Bessborough in Cork, Sean Ross Abbey near Roscrea, and Castlepollard in Westmeath. For now, all the focus is on Tuam.

As it is an extremely sensitive subject, very few, if any, voices have questioned the process, where it will end, or what will ultimately be achieved. There is no doubting the noblest of motives in pursuing the course of action on which the state has embarked. Atonement for the sins of the past is entirely healthy and even necessary. The babies, whose final resting place was a sewage tank, were appallingly served in their brief existence. Excavating and reburying the remains, it could well be argued, is the fairest and most appropriate way to address the injustice that occurred.

Peter Mulryan, a survivor of the Tuam mother and baby home, walks with a group of people carrying shovels from the Square in Tuam town to the mother and baby site to protest over delays in exhuming their relatives. 

However, there are going to be huge difficulties around this process reaching anything that could be considered a positive outcome. The passage of time, the physical conditions in which the remains have been kept, and the prospect of finding relatives will present major challenges. What are the realistic chances of any sort of closure through this excavation? How many families will receive the remains of their long-deceased relative and have a reburial in a proper, fitting resting place?

Catherine Corless, who discovered the site, has done trojan work in documenting the existence of hundreds of babies who had effectively been wiped from history. She is owed a debt by past, current, and future generations for shining a powerful light into another dark corner of this country in the twentieth century. Her work in putting together the story of the home made world headlines when it broke in 2014.

Two years later, a test excavation took place at the site. One of those involved in the work, forensic archaeologist Dr Niamh McCullagh, told the documentary, The Missing Children, that human remains were identified in the chamber. The test excavation did not count the dead. “It’s more than ten but is it more than 100, we can’t say,” she said.

“Individualisation of the mixed remains needs to take place,” she said. “Putting back together remains into an individual and then the set of remains could be put forward for DNA identification. The best scenario … that they are individualised as much as possible and that those individuals are given a respectful burial.”

For this to occur, DNA samples would have to be taken and matched with a sample from living “eligible family members”, according to the act. This would require anybody who believes a close relative may have died there as a baby to come forward and provide the sample. One might ask what will be considered a positive conclusion. If five sets of remains can be individualised, matched with relatives, and subsequently, after due process, be reburied? Ten? Fifty? The other issue is what is to become of the remains that can’t be individualised or identified.

Last Sunday, in a piece under the headline ‘A stain on Ireland’s Conscience’, The Observer newspaper reported on the excavation. Geoff Knupfer, a former detective who headed up the commission to locate “the disappeared” during the Troubles, told the paper that the dig will probably involve archaeologists, anthropologists, investigators, and site managers. He said not all remains will provide a positive DNA match and there could be disputes over ownership and the fate of some remains.

“I fear this could prove something of a minefield,” he said. “This process would be followed by coroners’ inquests and the release of remains to families — another potentially difficult area.”

Catherine Corless at the Tuam mother and baby site.

The decision to excavate was taken at a cabinet meeting in 2018. An expert group made five recommendations to the then minister Katherine Zappone on how to deal with the scenario as discovered by Ms Corless. The fifth option was excavation. Ms Corless and a support group had lobbied hard for excavation as they believe that this is the best, most humane course of action. The government went with it. There was no evaluation of how difficult the work might be or what the chances were of an outcome that could be considered in anyway positive in terms of closure or justice.

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Ms Zappone has left politics. The current incumbent, Mr O’Gorman, told The Observer that nothing on this scale has ever been done before. “This will be one of the most complex operations of its kind in the world,” he said. Mr O’Gorman will be long gone from his current role whenever the excavation reaches either an end or an impasse. If there is any controversy, when that time comes, the minister of the day will explain that the real decisions were taken long before he or she took up office.

It is entirely understandable that Ms Corless and the relatives of some babies who died want to advance in this manner. They have an emotional attachment to the memory of tiny human beings and their mothers who were among the most innocent of victims of the callous and cold regime that existed at the interface of state and religion during the period in question. But, in light of all the complexities involved, not to mention any philosophical issues around disturbing the dead, is this the best way to proceed?

An alternative means of honouring and remembering might have been a striking memorial piece at the site. Other measures, such as education bursaries for children living in disadvantage, could have complimented this, providing a living and focused reminder of how appallingly treated those at the margins in another lifetime were.

That is not to be. The excavation is going ahead. One can only hope that the reservations expressed here are wide of the mark and that some closure and justice will ultimately be achieved.