President Michael D Higgins Is "Appalled and Saddened" by Tuam Baby Grave Scandal
By Sarah Bardon
President Michael D Higgins has said he is appalled at the discovery of a mass unmarked grave at a mother and baby home in Galway. He said: "I was appalled as I know so many in Ireland were at what has been reported and what has been found. “My first reaction was of enormous sadness. These are children who while they were alive had rights, the rights to protection and who if dead had the right to be looked after with dignity. Time doesn’t remove any of those rights.
"Now what is important is that of all of the questions that are provoked by this are answered and are answered adequately with the assistance of science and foresnics. "There is a reminder in it of history and our past that there is so much to be revealed and so much to be learned from these really terrible reports that are appearing. "The structure of an inquiry is a matter for Government but I do share the concern of all the Irish I have met since the reports. "The quicker we do this and answer all these questions comprehensively the better it is for our own understanding and of the understanding of others of us abroad." Tuam Survivor: "Many children would be there one day and gone the next..they simply disappeared." Meanwhile it has emerged that a private company has carried out radar examinations at the Mother and Baby Home in Tuam.
TST Engineering was commissioned to carry out the work by the Irish Mail on Sunday. The results are due to be known in a few days. It comes as nuns in charge of an institute for single mothers where the burial of hundreds of babies in a septic tank has been uncovered have said they no longer hold records from the home. The Sisters of Bon Secours, which operated the Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Co Galway, said they were shocked and deeply saddened by reports of the burial of 798 dead infants from 1925 to 1961. It was one of 10 similar homes across Ireland - three others which have little angels plots are believed to hold the remains of another 3,200 babies and infants. Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has called for the religious orders which ran these institutes to release full details of all the people they took in. In a statement, Bons Secours said it handed its records to the state after it closed its doors. "In 1961 the home was closed. All records were returned to the local authority, and would now be within the Health Service Executive, Co Galway," the order said. The nuns said they are committed to engaging with Catherine Corless, the historian who identified the extent of the burials, and the Tuam graveyard committee, which is seeking a permanent memorial at the site. The order also said it welcomes the Government review of records of what happened in Tuam. Locally it had been suggested that the burial site could date back to famine times after it was uncovered by two youngsters in 1975. But amid growing national and international disgust at the details from the town, the Archbishop said the practice of the mass burials was sickening. "The Gospel message is that authentic faith is measured by how we treat children who represent Jesus Christ," he said. "Every effort should be made, by all parties who were involved in setting up, running and overseeing these homes, to ensure the mothers and children who were sent there have an accurate account as possible of their own life stories." All that remains of the site in the town is a grassy area on the edge of a housing estate near where the home stood and where the concrete septic tank is understood to lie.
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