Over 1,000 people take part in emotional march in memory of babies who perished

By Aine Hegarty
Irish Mirror
June 11, 2014

http://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/politics/over-1000-people-take-part-3677663

Survivors of mother and baby homes

Baby grows are hung from the gates of Leinster House

Protest over the 800 babies found in unmarked grave in Galway

Ken Farr, Coleen Prestage and Lea Prestage (10) from Glenageary at march

Survivors draped babygrows and teddy bears with poignant messages from the gates of Leinster House

Over 1,000 people held a candlelit vigil this evening in memory of the 4,000 babies who died in mother and baby homes.

Emotions ran high as people left poignant messages on babygrows draped on the iron railings of Leinster House along with shoes, teddy bears and flowers in memory of the dead infants.

One read "For the babies we hold in our hearts and not in our arms" and another "For the mothers, the love and support you never had is here today".

Among them was Lorna Mulligan, whose mother Catherine was forced to give her up for adoption in August 1972, aged just seven weeks, after being born in St Patrick's on the Navan Road, Dublin.

She would not meet her mother until 1994.

"I was the only child she had," she said.

"She would never speak to me about her experiences - I don't blame her.

"Basically I could have been in the same boat 22 years ago.

"It's time that Ireland stood up and recognised what happened in Tuam and what happened to the babies and recognise them and give us what we deserve."

Successive governments failed to act on calls for an inquiry into alleged forced adoptions from some of the homes and questions also remain unanswered over vaccine trials in institutions.

Gary Daly, a solicitor who helped organise the vigil after reading about the extent of the deaths, said it was a display of solidarity.

"We've terrible sympathy for the mothers and children, and the people involved want to come and express solidarity," he said.

"For something of this magnitude, it really should be somebody carrying the weight of a judge, a practising judge, and they should have powers of compellability."

Earlier two seven-year-old girls handed ministers a petition signed by 30,000 people demanding a judge lead the inquiry into the mother and baby home scandal.

Dasha Klyaritskaya-Hilliard and her friend, Juliette Bruce Merzouk, from Dublin, took the message on behalf of people in more than a dozen countries who joined an online campaign urging the Government to escalate investigations.

Robin Hilliard, Dasha's father, from Dalkey, Co Dublin, helped create the petition with a friend, Amanda Maloney, from Limerick, following revelations about the deaths of 796 infants at a mother and baby home in Tuam, Co Galway between 1925 and 1961.

"I'm old enough to remember the reputation of some of those places as a kid. And now that the thing has come out in the open it seems you have to wonder how was this allowed to happen and what on earth were people thinking," he said.