Survivors of Protestant residential institutions have urged the Mother and Baby Home Commission to ask the Government to include a Cork rescue home in its terms of reference.

The survivors have also asked the Commission's chairperson, Judge Yvonne Murphy, to clarify why the majority of former residents of the Westbank Home in Co Wicklow are excluded from the investigation despite indications to the contrary from Tánaiste Joan Burton.

The Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes between 1922 and 1998 was established last February following an outcry over the treatment - including the burial - of residents in an institution in Tuam, Co Galway which closed in the 1960s.

In a letter to Judge Murphy, Griffith College academic Niall Meehan highlights the exclusion of the now defunct Braemar Rescue Home for Protestant Girls in Cork City from the Commission's terms of reference.

Dr Meehan says this has happened despite Braemar being the first recorded source of babies who were sent from here for adoption in the United States after tWorld War 2 .

Recalling that the Commission is tasked with investigating adoption practices affecting residents of homes, he contrasts Braemar's exclusion with the inclusion of Manor House in Catlepollard, a Catholic institution from which some of the other earlier American adoptees were taken.

Dr Meehan says the Government cannot entertain discriminating against Protestant women in this way.

Turning to the controversial former Westbank Home in Greystones, Co Wicklow, Dr Meehan says most residents will not be allowed to tell the Commission their stories. 

He recalls that when it was excluded from the the list of 14 named institutions in the Government's terms of reference for the Commission, the Tánaiste Joan Burton, told the Dáil that Judge Murphy had confirmed that cases from it and other such institutions would not be excluded from the Commission's Confidential Committee and that anybody with anything of relevance to contribute could do so.

A spokesperson for the Commission has told RTÉ News that Braemar and Westbank had already come to its attention and that they would probably be looked at in their capacity as exit routes for residents from the homes included in the terms of reference.

The spokesperson added that the Commission would investigate them fully if they were included in the terms, and that it was up to the Government to amend them if it wanted to.