Tuam families ask Prone to apologise in person
RELATIVES of children who died in the Tuam Mother and Baby Home have called on Terry Prone to apologise to them in person for scathing remarks she made about the scandal.
This comes after Ms Prone, who represented the nuns at the centre of the controversy, broke her silence and apologised on the Late Late Show on Friday night.
She did so in response to a request phoned in by historian Catherine Corless, whose research led to the discovery of the mass grave.
Ms Prone ignored repeated attempts by the Irish Mail on Sunday to get her to comment on the publication of the interim report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes in March.
Ms Corless uncovered death certificates for 796 children at the home, and her research was first highlighted in The Irish Mail on Sunday in 2014.
When a French journalist tried to ask questions of the Bon Secours sisters – who ran the home – spokeswoman Ms Prone dismissed the story.
She wrote in an email: ‘When the “O My God – mass grave in West of Ireland” broke in an English-owned paper (the Mail) it surprised the hell out of everybody, not least the Sisters of Bon Secours in Ireland, none of whom had ever worked in Tuam and most of whom had never heard of it.
‘If you come here, you’ll find no mass grave, no evidence children were ever so buried, and a local police force casting their eyes to heaven and saying “Yeah, a few bones were found – but this was an area where Famine victims were buried. So?”.’
The story of Ms Prone’s response was also first revealed by the Irish Mail on Sunday. Speaking to the MoS yesterday, Ms Corless said: ‘People rang me after the Late Late to say thanks for getting the question asked. Some were saying she should go down with flowers to the grave, and give a proper apology.
‘I think she should definitely do that, not to me but to the relatives.
‘It was a terrible email, she more or less mocked the whole thing. It was so childish. She never retracted it, the survivors were taken aback by it.
‘It’s a pity the sisters used Terry Prone to talk for them. It’s a shame they didn’t come out and say we didn’t know what happened then, what can we do for you now?’
A spokeswoman for RTÉ declined to say whether Ms Prone was given prior notice of the question.