Tuam mother and baby home families doubt Roderic O’Gorman’s vow on exhumations
The Tuam Babies Family Group is “sceptical” of Minister Roderic O’Gorman’s pledge that a mass exhumation will go ahead at the former Galway mother and baby home next year.
Members claim the children’s minister is being “opportunistic and reactive” as he made the pledge following the broadcast of The Missing Children documentary on RTÉ One last Tuesday.
Annette McKay, whose sister Mary Margaret died at the Tuam mother and baby home in Co Galway, said the minister was “out of touch” if he truly believed exhumation could go ahead next year.
“There are a number of issues with what Roderic O’Gorman said. First of all, who is in charge of the exhumation? Is it gardaí, a coroner? Legally, that has to be decided,” she said.
"There is an ongoing criminal investigation by gardaí. That must be considered. Has it been? Ideally, we would like to see a coroner appointed to oversee this next step. But all of this will take considerable time.
“What will the scale and scope of the exhumation be? What are the terms of reference? What about consultation with local groups as well as victims and their families?
“I am very sceptical of this latest pronouncement that the exhumation will take place next year. The timeline seems impossible given all the work that must still be done.
"I believe Roderic O’Gorman was just being opportunistic and reactive to the documentary.”
On Wednesday the Children’s Minister’s department talked about the exhumation plans. The comments came the day after the broadcast of the programme, which said the remains of 796 babies could be in a submerged septic tank on the site.
A test dig four years ago found 20 ordered crevices containing a “significant amount” of human remains. There are also children from the home who have disappeared, listed as dead, with no death certificates, or burial records, as required by law.
“The minister is acutely conscious of the urgent need to pass legislation in order to allow exhumation at the site in Tuam,” Mr O’Gorman’s department said after the programme. “He hopes to bring it through the legislative process as quickly as possible to allow exhumation of the site in 2022.”
The programme identified a systemised export market in Irish citizens, without the consent of their typically unmarried mothers who were kept in the homes.
Americans who were adopted as children provided letters from the Bon Secours nuns thanking adoptive parents for their donations, which were up to a year’s salary in some cases. The order chose not to take part in the programme.
Mr O’Gorman said he and his officials “have an absolute resolve to restore the dignity of the children inappropriately interred at the Tuam site, and to address the broader needs and concerns of survivors and their families as a matter of urgency”.
Late last week, Mr O’Gorman wrote to mother and baby home survivors to say he will seek Cabinet approval for a “payment scheme” in recognition of their “suffering”.
The scheme is to open next year with a projected cost of €800m and the plan assumes there will be thousands of potential beneficiaries.
Ms McKay said there have been a lot of promises by Government to properly deal with issues over the State handling of the Tuam home.
“The nuns got away with cruelty and have never been held to account. There have been a lot of promises. What we want is a proper exhumation and it needs to be treated as a crime scene,” she said.
Her late mother Maggie gave birth to her sister Mary Margaret at Tuam in 1942, after being raped at an industrial school. She later learned her baby had died, which was shown in official records.
When Maggie was 70, she told her family for the first time of being raped and then having a baby, who was immediately taken from her and later died. She died in 2016 aged 92.
“My mother’s name is still not on her gravestone and won’t be until my sister is exhumed. After everything that was done to my mother, does she not deserve Mary Margaret to be returned to her?” Ms McKay said.
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