Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-03-18
============================================================

Jim O'Callaghan (FF), Dublin Bay South

We want to be honest with people. We do not want to mislead the 829 families into believing that, by purchasing the site, we will be able to excavate and identify burial grounds. We need to be honest with people in this regard.
Just so the House is aware, on foot of the Government’s action plan for survivors and former residents of mother and baby homes, the former Minister for housing, Deputy O’Brien, wrote to local authorities requesting that development plan processes consider incorporating appropriate measures to ensure the protection of unrecorded burial sites. That is an issue that must be dealt with by the local authority in whose area Bessborough is placed. The action plan also contains commitments in relation to dignified, local memorialisation of known or agreed burial sites.
There is no point in purchasing the land and old home unless there is a realistic prospect of being able to identify burial grounds within them. Otherwise, we are just prolonging the suffering and pain of individuals who were in Bessborough.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-03-18/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:45+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-18