A pensioner has told how he and other children were treated as “outcasts” at the home at the centre of 800 babies scandal.

Tom Ward, 72, spent five and a half years at the institution before he was fostered by a Galway family.

He said: “The teachers, doctors, priests, they all looked down on us. We were only a number but things have changed, thanks be to God.

“I was fostered off to somebody. There were a lot of us fostered people. They got paid for having us in the house and they reared us, but the priests, the teachers, they all left us out.

“When we would go to town events or coming down from Mass, someone would say ‘Who’s the little laddie?’ and they would reply ‘Oh he was fostered out of that home’ and all eyes turned away. We were just outcasts.

“In school, we had to stay at the desk and we wouldn’t be able to go out to play.

“When you went to school they would say ‘you have no father or mother’ and that was very hurtful so in my own head I said I would pursue them.”

Mr Ward eventually traced his family.

“I met a Friar in Loughrea and he asked me where I was from. He said ‘I know who baptised you’ so he wrote to the Priest who baptised me and he wrote back saying he wanted to meet me.

“I went to see him and he wrote to a parish priest in my mother’s area who made arrangements for me to meet my mother.

“I was going on 30 years of age when I first met her. She was in her 50s. She had ten in her family besides me. I was the oldest.

“It was very strange. I was delighted of course. She was too. She brought me out to her home on that particular day. I met some of my siblings out there, some were in England, but I met them all eventually.

“I went on to pursue the other half, my father and that was a bigger job because I was led on a wild goose chase for a number of years.”

Mr Ward told Joe Duffy on RTE radio 1: “My family say ‘why bother?’, but I can’t rest. My birth certificate was 72 yesterday but I still want my father’s name on it.

“I am convinced that every child that was born at the time should have their fathers name on their birth certificate. Every child is constitutionally entitled to know.”

It has recently emerged up to 800 children may have died at the home during its period of operation from 1925 to 1961.

Up to 800 bodies were found in an unmarked grave close to the home.