IRELAND
IrishCentral
Professor James M. Smith
@IrishCentral
March 23, 2017
Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny visited the US last week for what many in Ireland see as his farewell, St. Patrick’s Day tour. But by traveling to America, Mr. Kenny also briefly escaped a scandal that shows no sign of abating back home. Recent news headlines scream, “Tuam mother and baby home a chamber of horrors says Taoiseach” and “Enda Kenny says babies … were treated like ‘some kind of sub-species.’”
Tuam was ostensibly a maternity home, providing services to unmarried mothers and their illegitimate children. It was owned by Galway County Council, managed by Catholic nuns, and inspected by the State.
Earlier this month, the government’s “Commission of Investigation” vindicated the claims of local historian Catherine Corless, who asserted in 2014 that 798 children had died at the Tuam Home. Tests now confirm the presence of human remains in a series of underground chambers, consistent with young children from the period in which the Home operated (1926-1961).
The Sisters of the Bon Secours interred infant remains in what Minister for Children Katherine Zappone—who visited Boston last week—describes as “a series of chambers that may have formed part of sewage treatment works.”
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