Micheal contacts survivors before ‘shocking’ report
Findings will be ‘difficult for everyone’
TAOISEACH Micheal Martin and Children’s Minister Roderic O’gorman have reached out privately to survivors of mother and baby homes, we can reveal.
Both have personally contacted a number of former residents ahead of the publication of a long- awaited report from a commission of inquiry set up seven years ago.
It is understood Minister O’gorman was “uncomfortable” with the narrative around the report and is anxious to fairly represent survivors and their experiences.
It is also understood a number of survivors will be given an outline of the report’s findings immediately after it is brought to Cabinet on Tuesday prior to publication.
A source said: “Minister O’gorman was handed this legacy, this poisoned chalice, and he seems determined to do as much as he can in the greatest interest of survivors.
“There has been a lot of internal politics here, a lot of misinformation, which has and is going to cause a lot of trauma.”
Minister O’gorman will bring a Memorandum to Cabinet to seek approval for the final Report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother & Baby Homes. On the same day he will bring a separate Memorandum seeking approval to proceed with the Certain Historic Burials Bill, allowing for exhumation and reburial at Tuam, Co Galway.
After the Cabinet meeting, the Taoiseach and Mr O’gorman will host an online presentation for former residents to outline some of the key findings of the report. This week, Minister O’gorman said the report is “very shocking” and will make “difficult reading for everyone in the country”. The report into 14 institutions has gone from 4,000 pages to 3,000 and most of its shocking revelations were published in the fifth interim report in April 2019. It confirmed the presence of human remains at Tuam, where 796 babies were dumped in a septic tank at a home run by the Bon Secours Sisters. The report found that “the remains involved a number of individuals with age-at-death ranges from 35 foetal weeks to 2-3 years”. An estimated 900 children and babies died at Bessborough home in Co Cork, but the commission could only establish the burial place of 64.