Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

In 2011 the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus discontinued its adoption service and gave the registers from its mother and baby home at Bessborough in Cork to the HSE. In 2012 senior HSE personnel who were concerned at what was contained therein sent a report to the Department of Health and the Department of Children and Youth Affairs on the number of deaths that had occurred at Bessborough. The registers showed that in the years between 1934 and 1953 the deaths had occurred at Bessborough of 470 infants and ten women.

According to a former chief medical officer of the State, James Deeny, in his autobiography, To Cure and to Care, in one year alone, of the 180 children born in the home 100 died. One in five of those who died in the 1934 to 1953 period died of marasmus, that is, severe malnutrition. June Goulding, a midwife at Bessborough in the early 1950s, is another witness. In her book, The Light in the Window, she told of a house of pain where mothers in childbirth were denied pain relief and women who suffered vaginal tearing in childbirth were refused stitching as punishment for their sins. She and others told of the Americans who arrived at the home to purchase healthy babies from the nuns.

Some years ago I was contacted by a survivor who was born at Bessborough and I visited him in his home. He expressed to me his strong opinion that not all of the babies were buried in the tiny angels burial plot at the home. He believed the decision not to give babies who were buried a gravestone or a white cross was a business one. Simply put, the Americans rolling up the driveway at the end of their journey from Shannon Airport would be less likely to buy their baby from the nuns if they were to look out of the car window and see a small forest of white crosses on the grounds of the home. He asked me to call for an excavation at the home. I have previously done so and I am doing so again today.

We heard from Carmel Cantwell, whose brother William died in the home in the early 1960s. She does not know for sure where her brother is buried - perhaps in the angels plot but perhaps not. How many more babies such as William are buried there and where are their graves? Where can their relatives go to pay their respects? It is not good enough just to point to a tiny plot and say "He is in there, somewhere". Do William's sister and his elderly mother not deserve better than that?

The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Paschal Donohoe, said the other day that before we go ahead with such decisions it is important to establish whether we have any evidence which might prompt such excavations. What more evidence does the Minister need? There should be excavations at Bessborough and all of the other sites too.

Religious institutions no longer run mother and baby homes in this country. However, the mother and baby homes were the product of a society which refused to separate the church from the State. To this day, church and State remain unseparated and religious orders still have control of schools and hospitals. The Roman Catholic Church still finds its teachings reflected in the laws of the land.

The ghosts of the women who were refused pain relief in the mother and baby homes in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s watch over their granddaughters and great-granddaughters who are sent to England in secrecy and shame for the abortions the State refuses to carry out here. Ending scandals of this kind is entirely linked with ending the scandal of a conjoined church and State sanctioned through the decades by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael alike. We should separate the church from the State now.

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