Archbishop Martin calls for full inquiry into mother and baby homes

By Tim O'brien
Irish Times
June 9, 2014

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/archbishop-martin-calls-for-full-inquiry-into-mother-and-baby-homes-1.1825270

Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin said it was very important that any investigation should be separated from the church and State

Child safeguarding expert Ian Elliott has welcomed a suggestion that he be part of any investigation which may be set up by the State into mother and baby homes in Ireland.

“Absolutely. I’d be very, very interested,” he told The Irish Times last night. “If there’s anything useful I can contribute, I’d be delighted.”

Chief executive of the Catholic Church’s National Board for Safeguarding Children until June of last year, his name was mentioned yesterday by the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, as the sort of person who ought to be on such an investigation team.

Dr Martin said it was very important that any investigation should be separated from the church and State or any other organisation that was involved “because there is an entanglement there that goes right through a period of Irish history. It is only an independent person who would be able to that.”

Such a commission should “perhaps be headed by a judicial personality” and he thought a person of the calibre of Ian Elliott, whom he described as a “very strong” person in the investigation of child abuse in the Catholic Church, would be a very interesting addition to any such commission, he said.

At a Mass in Dublin’s Pro-Cathedral last night, Dr Martin said that “when the church in any way weakens in the way it shows respect for each individual human being, especially children and those who are weak or ostracised, then the church betrays its mission and betrays Jesus himself”.

He continued: “We must never forget that Jesus is there in those who suffer, in those who are ostracised, in those who fail and fall into sin, in those who seek the meaning of life, and it is among those who are on the margins that we learn the weakness and the false certainties of many of our own ideas of faith.”

Medical trials

Speaking on RTÉ Radio One’s This Week programme yesterday he called for a properly constituted commission to examine issues raised by the discovery of mass baby deaths at St Mary’s mother and baby home in Tuam, Co Galway – including allegations that medical trials were carried out on children.

“If something happened in Tuam it probably happened in other mother and baby homes around the country,” he said, and because of this he believed a wide-ranging investigation was necessary. Those who ran the institutions “didn’t understand and did not want to understand how you look after children”, he added.

People would claim this was how Ireland was at the time. But he said the church should have been different, more caring.

Meanwhile, mothers who lost babies at the former Bessborough mother and baby home in Cork tied teddy bears and toys to the gates of the building yesterday. They said they hoped to be included in any inquiry the Government orders. Officials from five Government departments are considering what the next move should be regarding an investigation into the mother and baby homes.