Mother and Baby Homes
Seanad Éireann — 2026-03-19
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Marian Harkin (IND), Sligo-Leitrim

I am responding on behalf of the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality. I thank the Senator for raising this very sensitive and important issue. It offers the Minister, Deputy Foley, a chance to respond.
I am very conscious of the hurt felt by survivors and family members of people who died in institutions. The commission of investigation into mother and baby homes was established in 2015, as the Senator knows, to investigate issues associated with mother and baby institutions, including deaths and burial arrangements. Its findings in relation to each institution are set out in its reports. The commission confirmed the presence of juvenile remains, buried in a manifestly inappropriate manner, at the site of the former mother and baby institution in Tuam.
In 2022, the Government directed the establishment of the Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention, Tuam to manage and oversee the excavation, recovery, analysis, identification, if possible, and reburial of the children’s remains at the site. The intervention is being carried out under the provisions of the Institutional Burials Act 2022, which provides for the appointment of a director where the Government is satisfied that burials have taken place and where there is evidence that those burials are manifestly inappropriate. The Tuam director was appointed in 2023. Preliminary groundworks were completed at the site at the end of 2024 and the excavation commenced in July 2025. Since starting the excavation, the director has published five technical updates. These are all available on his office’s website at www.odait.ie .
Turning to Bessborough, one of the tragic aspects of the commission’s findings in relation to the former institution is that there is uncertainty regarding the burial place of many children who were resident there. The commission carried out cartographic and landscape assessments of possible unrecorded burial arrangements in Bessborough. It also carried out a site survey and followed up with people in response to its appeal seeking information about burials, but it was unable to find any evidence of burials of the children who died at Bessborough in the grounds. As no evidence of burial locations was found, the commission did not consider it feasible to excavate the full available site, which amounts to 60 acres, or indeed the former 200-acre estate, parts of which have now been built on. While I understand that there have been calls for further investigations, it is important to note that there are differing views among survivor groups about how the site should now be treated.
The Government’s response to the legacy of mother and baby institutions is set out in the action plan for survivors and former residents of mother and baby and county home institutions. On foot of the action plan, the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage wrote to local authorities, including Cork City Council, requesting that development plan processes give adequate consideration to incorporating appropriate measures to ensure the protection of unrecorded burial sites associated with an institution.

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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/seanad/2026-03-19/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:45+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-19