Tuam families must wait at least a year for exhumations
AGEING relatives of hundreds of infants buried at the former Tuam Mother and Baby Home will have to wait at least another year for exhumations to begin.
Representatives of survivors and families have been urgently seeking a scheme to identify the remains buried at Tuam.
Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone called the Government decision to approve the drafting of the law required for this to happen as a “significant milestone”.
But she also said she was “sorry” that once the Bill is passed it will take even longer for the excavation process to start and she is grateful for the forbearance of the families and survivors.
Catherine Corless, the historian who uncovered the improper burial of almost 800 babies at the site, welcomed the progress but said: “I can’t understand why it’s taking so long.”
Speaking on ‘RTÉ News’, she made a plea to Government, saying: “Please don’t leave the survivors waiting another year... many of them are in their late 70s and 80s and they’re hanging on just to see justice done for their families.”
Ms Zappone could not offer a definitive time-line for when the excavations will start but suggested it may not begin, at the earliest, until the end of next year.
She said there have been complex data protection issues in relation to the DNA testing and an agency will have to be set up to oversee the work.
The minister said she does not believe the Bill will be passed before the general election, but that she expects the next government to implement it.
The Bon Secours order – which ran the former home at Tuam before it closed in 1961 – will make a voluntary contribution of €2.5m towards the cost of the excavation process.
Ms Zappone said the overall costs are estimated at between €6m and €13m.
The minister said the decision to progress the Bill is “a very significant milestone for all of us who are concerned with the site at the former children’s home in Tuam”.
She said the new law will allow for a phased excavation and exhumation and for the respectful re-interment of the remains.
The Bill will also allow for excavations at other institutions if comparable burial practices are found to have taken place, although Ms Zappone stressed no evidence of similar practices elsewhere has been found.
She said the State will take responsibility for “past failings”. “It will allow us to afford those children the dignity and respect in death that they are owed,” she added.