Babies remembered
Peter Mulryan lays flowers (right) before a remembrance service for 796 babies whose bodies were discovered in a septic tank at the Tuam Mother and Baby Home, Dublin, in 2014.
Dozens of people marched in Dublin on Saturday (local time), carrying white shoeboxes (above) to represent the babies’ coffins.
Relatives of the babies say more should be done to recover and identify their remains and to determine how they died.
Mulryan, who lived in the home until he was 4, believes his sister is among the babies and toddlers buried in the unmarked grave.
An official inquiry said in 2017 there were ‘‘significant quantities’’ of remains at the site dating to the period when the home operated. According to researchers, who compared the number of death certificates issued with recorded burials, almost 800 children could be interred there.
‘‘I’ve a sister in that septic tank in Tuam and I want her, and the rest, out of there for a proper DNA test and to be handed back to their siblings,’’ Mulryan said. ‘‘We want to give them the proper Christian burial they were denied.’’
The discovery of the unmarked graves horrified Ireland, reviving anguish over how women and children were once treated at statebacked Catholic institutions.
The infant mortality rate at Churchrun institutions was significantly higher than in wider Irish society. Death certificates mostly blamed infections such as measles, bronchitis, meningitis, tuberculosis and pneumonia.
‘‘From those remains, there will be evidence, even now, of maltreatment and neglect,’’ lawyer Kevin Higgins told the gathering, claiming the Government did not want the truth to emerge.