Horrors of the Tuam home will be subject mother and baby of off icial inquiry
Inquiry to estabish how many buried Cabinet to discuss initial report Tuesday Key issues to include local coroners role Gardai were ‘investigating the wrong site’
A FULL inquiry headed by a senior counsel or other legal figure will be held into the horrors of the Tuam mother and baby home, the Irish Mail on Sunday has learned.
A report will go to Cabinet on Tuesday, it has also been learned, which will provide a framework for the inquiry and any further action.
At present, Taoiseach Enda Kenny is still on Government business in the United States and will not return until tomorrow.
Details of the inquiry will not be announced until some time after Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting. However, a current interdepartmental review is not expected to complete its work until the end of June.
This week, gardaí insisted they were not investigating the burial site, and the Archbishop of Tuam referred all inquiries to the Bon Secours nuns.
And on Wednesday, evidence of apparent unwillingness of the force to mount a full investigation emerged when the Garda press office issued a statement to RTÉ journalist Philip Boucher Hayes saying: ‘The grounds in Tuam were being surveyed in 2012 and bones were found. They are historical
‘What action was taken after the find in 1975?’
burials going back to Famine times, there is no suggestion of any impropriety and there is no Garda investigation.’
In fact however, the 2012 survey referred to was in a different location in Tuam in the centre of a road junction. While no evidence exists to show children are buried at the Bon Secours site, the records obtained by Catherine Corless show indisputably that the bodies of 796 children who died at the home have never been recorded as buried.
Separately, the MoS has established that 12 of the nuns were exhumed from graves at their hospital in Tuam when it was sold by the religious order in 2001 to the then Western Health Board, and reinterred in Knock, Co. Mayo.
Senior government sources outlined to the MoS yesterday the contents of the report to Cabinet. It will outline what a cross-departmental group set up last week has learned and, more importantly, what questions remain.
The key questions to be discussed at Cabinet, according to Government sources, include whether the plot at the Bon Secours order’s site was registered as a burial ground with the local authorities or not – and if not, whether the 1975 discovery of bones on the site was reported to the gardaí and a coroner, and if reported, what action did those authorities take.
The report going to Cabinet will also seek answers to the following questions:
How many bodies were buried at the site of the mother and baby home?
What was the mortality rate at the home (to be calculated when the number of similar such homes is established)?
How did the mortality rate in Tuam compare with other institutional homes?
The interdepartmental inquiry set up last week will feed into this report for Cabinet.
It is not expected that much progress will be made by Tuesday morning, but a Government source said last night that a full public inquiry is ‘inevitable’.
‘The key decision-makers in Government are already saying that the revelations about the Tuam mother and baby home will inevitably lead to a full public inquiry,’ said a Government source familiar with the workings of the interdepartmental group. ‘The first two questions are key: was it registered and what action was taken. Then we will have to decide on the scope of the inquiry. It would probably be headed by a senior counsel or similar figure,’ he added.
There is already a cross-departmental review of the facts under way. According to Government sources, the departments involved are: Children; the Taoiseach; Social Protection; Health; Justice; Envi- ronment and Public Works.
The Taoiseach said the disclosures that almost 800 children died over a 36-year period at St Mary’s Home in Tuam were ‘another element of our country’s past’ that needed to be dealt with.
Mr Kenny, speaking during a visit to the US, said that the review announced by Minister for Children Charlie Flanagan would decide what was best to do to establish all
the facts. He also undertook to broaden the scope of the review if it were found there were ‘other locations around the country’.
For his part, Mr Flanagan said the inter-departmental group examining the circumstances behind the high mortality rate at the home run by the Bon Secours order of nuns between 1925 and 1961 would complete its review by the end of June.
Saying that the Tuam home was not exceptional or unique, Mr Flanagan said: ‘The revelations in Tuam have brought to the fore the situation in other mother and baby homes throughout the country.
‘These revelations are a reminder of our darker past where children were far from cherished.’
Minister for Public Expenditure Brendan Howlin did not rule out a criminal investigation. ‘There is a sense of revulsion at the callous disregard for the lives of children and young people,’ he said.
Last Thursday the issue became the subject of Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil and also of a prolonged debate later in the day.
Politicians from Government and Opposition parties demanded inquiries to establish the circumstances behind the high morality rate, that meant some 796 children were recorded as having died in the home over 36 years.
There were also questions about the manner in which children were buried, and if any remains were disposed of within a septic tank on grounds next to the home. The building had previously served as a workhouse dating back to the 1840s.
Local Fianna Fáil TD Colm Keaveney demanded that the Garda secure the site for forensic examination. His call was supported by Lucinda Creighton of the Reform Alliance, who said the Garda had been premature in concluding there was no question of impropriety in relation to remains on the site.
While there have been repeated reports that gardaí are investigating the missing bodies, a spokesman said last night that the force was simply ‘feeding into the interdepartmental inquiry’.