Family of Tuam baby seeks return of donation

Relatives object to Graveyard panel opposing exhumation

A FAMILY member of one of the Tuam babies who died in the controversial mother and baby home has asked the Tuam Graveyard Committee for her donation to be returned, saying she is unhappy with the group’s recent actions.

Almost €40,000 was raised after the Tuam Graveyard Committee appealed for €50,000 in funds to build a memorial to the 796 children who died at the Co. Galway home between 1925 and 1961. Donations poured in from around the world after the tragic story of the babies was revealed by the Irish Mail on Sunday last year.

However last month, the group met with Children’s Minister James Reilly to ask that no excavation take place on the site where the children are believed to be buried.

In March, the Tuam Babies Family Group was formed.

Speaking to the MoS, a member of the group, Annette McKay, whose sister Mary Margaret died in the home in 1943, said she was appalled at the behaviour of the Tuam Committee who have no family in the grave.

‘I have emailed the group to ask for my donation back,’ said Ms McKay. ‘They are continuing with their agenda of speaking for the mothers and babies.’

Ms McKay’s sister Mary Margaret died of whooping cough at the Tuam home in June 1943. Ms McKay and her sisters Sheila Wilkinson and Dawn Finnegan, who live in Manchester, discovered more than a decade ago that their mother, who is now 91, gave birth to another daughter who died at the mother and baby home.

‘My sister died from a treatable ailment. My mother was not with her baby when she died, she was told of the death and was not allowed to attend any burial. On the day her baby died, she was discharged form the home,’ said Ms McKay.

Ms Finnegan said of her mother: ‘She never forgot her baby. But then there was never any proof that my sister died on a certificate. There will always be a question mark over is she there. My mum was never told.’

Ms McKay insists that facts relating to the deaths of the babies ‘can only be established by an exhumation of the site’.

The issue of whether the children’s bodies should be removed from the Tuam site ‘is not a decision for the Tuam Graveyard Committee to take’, she said.

‘Can they not see that by trying to make decisions for the women and children they are compounding the abuse they suffered?’

Local historian Catherine Corless, who worked for three years to uncover the names of the children who died at the home, has left the graveyard committee due to a difference of opinions and continues to work on her research.

There was no response from the Tuam Graveyard Committee last night.

‘Not a decision for committee to take’