PM ‘sorry’ for horror of baby abuse homes
DUBLIN: Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin on Wednesday apologised for the treatment of unmarried women and their babies in state and church-run homes, where thousands of children died over decades.
But campaigners for the survivors of the homes denounced the official report into the scandal as a “cop out” that played down the role of the church and the state.
Mr Martin told parliament that residents suffered a “profound generational wrong” at the so-called “mother and baby homes”.
The previous day a sixyear-long inquiry concluded that 9000 children had died in the institutions, which still operated in the Catholic country as recently as 1998.
The Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes (CIMBH) said 56,000 unmarried women and 57,000 children passed through the institutions over 76 years.
It found infants suffered an “appalling” 15 per cent mortality rate, while mothers suffered emotional abuse in “cold and uncaring” conditions.
“I apologise for the shame and stigma they were subjected to and which, for some, remains a burden to this day,” Mr Martin said. “I want to emphasise that each of you was in an institution because of the wrongs of others.”
He said the report revealed “significant failures of the state, church and of society”.
The homes housed unmarried women who became pregnant, were unsupported by their partners and family, and faced severe social stigma owing to the mainstream Catholic dogma of society.
Children born in the homes would often be separated from their mothers and put up for adoption, severing family ties.
The country’s most senior Catholic cleric, Archbishop Eamon Martin, apologised “unreservedly” for the role of the church in the abuse.
“I accept that the church was clearly part of that culture in which people were frequently stigmatised, judged and rejected,” he said.
The CIMBH report says responsibility for the abuse “rests mainly with the fathers of their children and their own immediate families”.
Campaigners said this was a “cop out”. “The families were pressurised by church and state,” Paul Redmond, chair of the Coalition of Mother and Baby Home Survivors, said.
“It was official policy in this country right up to 1974 to essentially separate single mothers and their children.”