Mr. David Dodd:

I thank members for taking the time to hear from survivors and their representatives. The Cork Survivors and Supporters Alliance, CSSA, represents a group of survivors of Bessborough Mother and Baby Home, including former residents and family members of women and children who resided within the institution. The CSSA’s membership includes family members of children who died while resident at Bessborough, and whose burial location is not recorded, and their supporters. Many of these children were buried within the grounds of Bessborough in unmarked graves.

It should be noted that the CSSA does not seek for the remains of the children buried at Bessborough to be excavated, exhumed or otherwise removed from the site. While the exhumation of remains in other sites, such as Tuam, may be an appropriate response, it is not appropriate at Bessborough. Rather, the CSSA seeks for the remains of children buried on the grounds to be preserved in place. Exhuming and moving the deceased children off the site is, in a way, just a direct means of dispersing the children who died there. It is the opposite of memorialisation and it is not the appropriate way to mark their lives and deaths at the place where the events took place.

Placing exhumation and removal as a central purpose of the Bill runs the risk of the Bill being well intentioned but achieving precisely the wrong thing. In one way, it could be said that it is just a convenient way of making the children disappear from sight again, and it is precisely the wrong response to what happened. The CSSA seeks that the site be appropriately cared for and memorialised. There should be an appropriate fencing of the burial ground to prevent animals accessing the site or people inadvertently and unknowingly walking on graves, and appropriate marking and commemoration, or both, of the children’s burial places.

These are the standards that are currently applicable to burial grounds in accordance with the Public Health (Ireland) Act 1878, as amended, and the Rules and Regulations for the Regulation of Burial Grounds 1888. A core issue is that these standards were not respected or applied in Bessborough House, despite applying to the burial ground there, and that remains the position. Given the failure to apply the burial rules, which are a statutory instrument to date, the rules should be elevated to the level of an Act.

There should be no difference of treatment between the burial grounds of the children at Bessborough, and mother and baby homes generally, and other children's burial grounds. The CSSA seeks the maintenance, preservation and memorialisation of the children’s burial ground on the site of the former Bessborough mother and baby institution and in the absence of legislative intervention, the issue remains unsettled. In addition, there is a right of reasonable access for the survivors and family members of children buried on the grounds of Bessborough, which should also be recognised in the Act. What underpins this is a universal human need and legal right. It is something we all share and is best expressed in the following judgment from the European Court of Human Rights:

The right of every person to be buried in a dignified manner in accordance with the traditions and customs of his family hardly requires special justification or even to be secured in written form in law. This right is clearly self-evident and stems from human nature as, perhaps, no other natural right. Equally natural and uncontested is the right of every person to conduct the burial of a person who is related and dear to them, to have an opportunity to perform one's moral duty and display one's human qualities, to bid farewell, to grieve, mourn and commemorate the deceased, however he may be regarded by society and the state, to have the right to a grave, which in all civilisations represents a sacred value and the symbol of memory.

That is from the European Court of Human Rights case, Arkhestov and others v. Russia.

We have provided some of the details of the burials at Bessborough but I am conscious of the five-minute speaking slot so I will move on. The commission of investigation findings are well familiar to the committee so I will deal with its final report. The commission appears to suggest the children's burial place at Bessborough cannot be identified in the absence of the excavation of the entire property. The CSSA strongly disagrees in circumstances where contemporaneous and reliable Ordnance Survey of Ireland, OSI, mapping evidence clearly indicates the location of the children's burial ground. That map has been appended to the submission.

The OSI has confirmed that the location of the burial ground is recorded on a revision map, the recording is reliable and accurate and the location would have to have been approved by the then occupiers, the Sisters of the Sacred Heart, and what is termed the name book and form 1.6 should also have been completed before any entry on a map could be made. The children and relatives are buried at this location unless the mapper who attended the site in 1950 wrongly recorded the site of the children's graveyard or the Sisters of the Sacred Heart wrongly signed off on the location, which is improbable to say the least and not a view supported by the OSI, the State's expert mapping service.

It is noteworthy that the interim report of the commission failed to identify the original trace drawing and demonstrated significant confusion about the mapping evidence and what it meant and showed, all of which was omitted from the final report, following receipt of the CSSA submission. The CSSA does not seek for the children's burial ground to be excavated or the children's remains to be exhumed or interred elsewhere; the children's remains should rather be preserved in place with appropriate marking and memorialisation, with a right of access for relatives wishing to access the graves.

In the view of Bessborough, the CSSA view excavation as desecrating the last burial place of the children, a place they have rested together for 40, 50 and 60 years. There is a section on the legal background to burial rights but I will move on because I am conscious of the five-minute stipulation on speaking slots. The fact that a duty to provide a "decent" or "dignified" burial was not respected in the past is no reason to disrespect the deceased children now. Removing the children from their burial ground so the land can be developed by building apartment blocks-----