Written answers

Wednesday, 22 January 2025

Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth

Departmental Projects

Photo of Sorca ClarkeSorca Clarke (Longford-Westmeath, Sinn Fein)
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1212. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth if he will act to excavate the site at Sean Ross Abbey and fully investigate the burial grounds. [1142/25]

Photo of Roderic O'GormanRoderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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The Institutional Burials Act 2022 provides a legislative basis for an intervention whereby the remains of those who died in residential institutions, and who were buried in a manifestly inappropriate manner, may be recovered and re-interred in a respectful and appropriate way. Section 7 of the 2022 Act requires that Government must be satisfied that burials have taken place and must have evidence that those burials are manifestly inappropriate in order to establish an Office of Director of Authorised Intervention to undertake an excavation and recovery of remains at a site associated with a particular institution.

The investigation of burial arrangements in Mother and Baby institutions, including the former institution at Sean Ross Abbey, was an important part of the work of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes. The Commission’s final report included a Report of Forensic Archaeological Investigations at Sean Ross Abbey Mother and Baby Home Children’s Burial Ground. The report, which was commissioned on foot of concerns about the burial ground in Sean Ross Abbey, found that infant human burials were located across the Children’s Burial ground and these had not been impacted by any utilities or drainage works. The report notes that coffins, or evidence of coffins, were located with the majority of remains (84%).

As set out in its final report, the Commission was satisfied that the forensic report provided clear evidence that the coffined remains of children under the age of one are buried in the designated burial ground. It noted that, without complete excavation, it was not possible to say conclusively that all of the children who died in Sean Ross were buried in the designated burial ground and that it did not consider that further investigation was warranted.

Following publication of the Commission’s final report I engaged with a local group in relation to their concerns that an area beyond the acknowledged burial ground at Sean Ross Abbey may also contain graves. In 2023, I provided funding to the group to support them in undertaking a survey of the land in question, which was not subject to investigation by the Commission.

The group submitted a copy of the report of the survey to my Department, and, as there is no expertise in the Department to assess it, the Chief Archaeologist in the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage was asked to review it. The Chief Archaeologist’s review, which has been shared with the group concerned, concludes that the survey report is inconclusive, with no clear evidence of burials. I understand, however, that the group continues to have concerns in this regard.

Given that the designated burial ground has been forensically investigated and there is no evidence of manifestly inappropriate burials, and there is also no evidence of manifestly inappropriate burials in the area outside the designated burial ground, it is not possible to bring forward a proposal to establish an Office of Director of Authorised Intervention to excavate the site at Sean Ross Abbey.

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