If you want to object to building over Bessborough, you have one week

There is also no time to waste in pursuing the effective investigations into deaths and disappearances that should have happened many decades ago, and that families are still requesting

The missing 19 mothers and 859 infants associated with Bessborough are part of the nation’s disappeared, abandoned in the past and disremembered in the present. File photo: Laura Hutton/RollingNews.ie

Seven weeks ago, Cork City Council granted planning permission for a private apartment development at the site of the former Mother and Baby Home in Bessborough. Permission was given even though 19 mothers and 859 infants associated with Bessborough are missing. 

These women and children are part of the nation’s disappeared, abandoned in the past and disremembered in the present.  Their burial places are not known. Records, testimony and analyses gathered by the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation on the questions of death and burial at Bessborough remain sealed in the Department of Children, Disability and Equality.