Last week, the Minister for Children, Katherine Zappone, announced a “programme of action to respect the memory and dignity of children who died in Tuam Mother and Baby home.”
The course of action involves a full exhumation and a forensic examination of the remains.
Kevin Higgins, legal advisor to the Tuam Home Survivor’s Network has said that “exhumation & reburial without an inquest is morally and legally indefensible.”
The Survivor’s group have been calling on the Coroner to convene an inquest since 2014.
The Tuam Home Survivor’s group statement says:
“In a functioning civil society, the local coroner would have convened an Inquest without delay into such a mass grave of children who had been jointly in the care of the State and the Bon Secours Order.”
“Two years after the discovery of those remains, the local Coroner has failed in his statutory duty and two Attorneys General have failed to nominate a replacement coroner, which in all the circumstances, they are clearly obliged to do under section 24 of the Coroners Act.”
Mr Higgins is critical of the government’s intention to introduce new legislation to give itself the power to bypass the law in respect of Inquests.
He says Zappone has acknowledged that “they need new legislation to proceed. What she means is that they need new legislation to exhume WITHOUT an Inquest.”
A survivor of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home, Mr Peter Mulryan was quoted on Twitter expressing his concern that no investigation into the cause of death was taking place.
“They are going to exhume the bodies, give them a proper, dignified burial … but there is no word about an investigation.”
Mr Higgins said the announcement of the excavation was “cynical and callous”.
The Department of Children has estimated the cost of the forensic investigation at the Tuam site will be between €6 million and €13 million. The Irish government reportedly asked the Bon Secours Sisters, who ran the Tuam Mother and Baby home, to contribute to the costs of exhuming the hundreds of children’s bodies. In response, the order offered €2.5 million towards the costs.
Speaking in the Dail, Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald described the sum as “entirely inadequate” adding that ” it strikes me that 50pc at least of the costs incurred would rightly fall to them.”
The decision by the government has implications for other sites of Mother and Baby Homes. Bessborough in County Cork had a higher infant mortality rate than Tuam and according to reports, children were being buried in unmarked graves up until 1990.
Mr Higgins said the dead babies and children of the Tuam Mother and Baby home were,
“Denied any justice in life, Government now proposes to deny them any justice in death. There will be no blame, no liability, no accountability, no vindication for the Tuam babies.”
