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Historian Catherine Corless placing a baby coffin at a shrine for the Tuam babies last year. Brian Farrell

'Those who were denied a voice for too long will continue to fight for justice for the lost children of Tuam'

Family members of the 796 babies who died and survivors of the home held a peaceful protest last month.

‘WHY CAN’T THEY just move on?’

It is a question which sometimes surfaces after the survivors of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home and the families of the 796 Tuam babies who died there come together to call for justice and the truth to emerge about the missing children. 

Some people claim that it would be too costly and too painful to carry out a thorough investigation and exhumation of the bodies at the site to find out how many children are really buried there and to give them dignified burials.

The families and survivors are often told that the pains of the past should be left in the past, and that the children of today should be prioritised, in the midst of what many see as healthcare and homelessness crises.

They heard and read those comments again when they staged a peaceful protest earlier this month.

But can they really move on?

When you talk to the families of the 796, who may or may not be buried in a septic tank, the most important thing of all is that the truth should emerge and that there should be some sort of belated justice for the children and their mothers.

The people who have had their lives turned upside down over the past five years – many by discovering they had siblings they knew nothing about before 2014 – believe they deserve some answers.

Otherwise, for all they really know, they and people like them could have brothers and sisters alive and well in the United States and Canada, completely unaware that they may have been adopted illegally from institutions across Ireland in the 20th century.

This story is not just the story of Tuam. An estimated 10,000 women were locked up in institutions across Ireland until the 1980s and nobody knows the true horrors of their stories and those of their so-called illegitimate children.

Only some of them were single mothers who were taken away from their families to cover up their pregnancy. Others were just locked up for being destitute or too much of a burden on their families in hard times.

Everyone deserves to know where they came from, to find out what happened to their missing siblings and a chance to heal.

Defeated, institutionalised 

Take Peter Mulryan.

He was 70 years old when he received a call from historian Catherine Corless, whose painstaking trawl through the records from the Tuam home showed that he had a little sister among the 796 children.

Her death was recorded, but her body has never been found.

Nobody had ever told him about his younger sister and he still has no proof that she was buried in the vicinity of that infamous septic tank in Tuam.

He had tracked his mother down to the Magdalene Laundry in Galway before he married in 1975, discovering that she had been locked up in institutions for all of her adult life.

Even when he brought her on day trips to the seaside with her grandchildren, the sparkle had gone from her eyes. She was defeated, institutionalised.

Peter’s mother was buried in a common grave with other ‘fallen’ women from the Magdalene Laundry at Bohermore Cemetery in Galway in 1989.

After finding out about his little sister for the first time 25 years after his mother’s death, how could he just shrug and move on?

Now 75, he is hoping that his sister is still alive. Only a full exhumation of the site will tell him whether she is buried among the bodies in Tuam.

When he went to New York and Boston for screenings of a documentary about the Tuam babies last year, he kept hoping an American woman would approach him and solve the mystery.

A tiny part of him clings to the hope that his younger sister is still out there in the US, blissfully unaware of where she came from.

Peter believes passionately that the Irish authorities are stonewalling him, that they see him and other family members as an inconvenience, and that they would prefer to seal up the site and mark it with a memorial stone.

It would certainly be the cheaper option.

He does not want any politician or official to put a price on his efforts to find out the truth about the younger sister he never knew he had.

Another example is Anna Corrigan. Growing up in Dublin as the only child of a Galway woman, Anna had no idea that she had two older brothers, John and William, until after her mother Bridget passed away.

Her mother’s first son died in a horrendous state of neglect, two years after he was born, and her second son was taken from her arms, never to be seen by her again.

Anna’s childhood was a happy one after her mother married a man from Dublin, but she cannot accept that the Irish State will not tell her and the other family members the full truth about the children who lived and died in institutions across Ireland.

She has written to the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs Katherine Zappone to insist that no cover-up takes place at the Tuam site.

papal-visit-to-ireland-2018 Tributes to the Tuam babies at the Stand4Truth march last year. RollingNews.ie RollingNews.ie

Dark secrets of youth

Take Annette McKay, who grew up in the UK.

She considers her late mother one of the “lucky” ones, because she escaped to the UK after being locked up in the Tuam Mother and Baby Home.

One of eight children, Margie O’Connor was detained in an institution in Galway City, aged 11, when she was found destitute after her own mother had died. 

Margie became pregnant after being raped by a caretaker when she was 17.

After Tuam, she was moved to another institution in Loughrea, Co Galway. It was there she was told “the child of her sin” was dead.

After moving to England, Annette’s mother never told her family about the dark secrets of her youth. Consumed by grief, perhaps haunted by the memories of her first child, she spent a year in bed after one of her sons drowned in an accident, aged 25.

Although she went on to have six children in England, Margie only spoke once – on the day her first great-grandchild was born – about the child she lost in Tuam. Until then, Annette always thought she was the oldest sibling in the family.

Annette, an elected member of Bury Council near Manchester, travelled to Tuam last month to be with other family members and survivors.

She wanted to mark the first anniversary of the visit of Pope Francis to Ireland and to highlight how little has been done for the families of the 796.

She has accused the Irish State, the Catholic Church and the religious orders of abdicating their responsibilities to Irish citizens by refusing to face up to the human rights abuses in institutions all across Ireland, not just in Tuam.

She believes that the women provided slave labour in the Magdalene Laundries and the mother and baby homes, that the institutions were run like concentration camps and that the site of the Tuam home should be preserved as a crime scene.

Annette says the children who were branded as illegitimate used to walk around like ghosts in their own country and were never expected to have the confidence to speak up for themselves.

For Peter, Anna, Annette, and the other family members, there is too much truth to be uncovered for them to forget about the past and simply move on.

Only a full exhumation of the site and dignified burials for their siblings, if they are actually buried in those unmarked graves in Tuam at all, will allow them to let go of the past and start some much-needed healing.

Until then, those who were denied a voice for too long will continue to fight for justice for the lost children of Tuam.

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    Mute Maurice Danaher
    Favourite Maurice Danaher
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:28 PM

    Current national debt is circa €190B. Is Noonan giving up on getting the ECB to finance the Bank debt and get it deducted from the €190B. This was one of FG’s election promises. The real national debt figure is probably close to €500B if we were to accrue all PRSI pension liabilities. Yesterday’s article in the Sunday Times is frightening on this.

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    Mute Winston Teardrops
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:33 PM

    Why would they include future liabilities? At that rate you could bring future expected revenue into the equation!

    61
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    Mute Emily Elephant
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:40 PM

    Because as from 2017, we have to account for unfunded liabilities to give a true picture of national debt. Just as companies have had to do for years. There’s no real difference between a bond you have to repay and a pension you’re committed to paying, except in accounting terms.

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    Mute Maurice Danaher
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:01 PM

    Well said. Couldn’t have put it better myself.

    19
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    Mute Kate Ellen Egan
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:04 PM

    Where will the money to fund these early repayments come from ? I know it’s a stupid question but does anyone know the answer ?

    11
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    Mute Robin Tobin
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:11 PM

    Maurice the minister is doing lip service for the next election. Europe is in receivership and has told Noonan no to what you have noted. It would be nice but our politician didn’t talk hard they were the good boys in the class. So Europe expects them to keep paying.

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    Mute Alien8
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:15 PM

    They will be coming from 15 year loans/bond issues so the banks will be lending this money to repay them back early.

    10
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    Mute VoiceOfVanguard
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:23 PM

    Wait ’til Ireland doesn’t get the retroactive bank recapitalization.

    And when – not if – new international corporate tax rules take effect from 2016 (OECD), at least €50 billion, or half the annual value of services exports will be vapourized.

    Plus, some multi-nationals have also said they will leave when that happens i.e. when they have to start paying a lot more corporation tax back home on top of high wages in Ireland.

    Hold on to your tin hats.

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    Mute Richard Rodgers
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:28 PM

    Emily
    Perhaps now the penny might drop when we consider the point John Bruton was making when discussing such liabilities recently.!
    He was massively abused on this site when his opinion about defaulting by the State on pensions etc when the alternative was bankruptcy .
    How quickly we shoot the messenger in Ireland rather than trying to deal with realities.

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    Mute SeanieRyan
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 8:14 PM

    Still think that a debt deal will have to be done.

    The EU live in a fantasy world where real economic reality is denied and put on long finger.

    They blew their chance to resolve the Euro crisis.

    11
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    Mute Ben Gunn
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 8:32 PM

    That would apply to unfunded civil service pensions but not to PRSI pensions. That liability is subject to year by year legislation and, in theory, could be reduced or abolished by a new Finance Act. It won’t happen of course, but the possibilty means that it is not a reckonable long term debt.

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    Mute Stephen Brady
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 8:47 PM

    What do you mean give up, they didn’t even ask for feck sake

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    Mute Kerry Blake
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 9:48 PM

    ohhh I feel another seismic shift coming on….

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    Mute Huggy Bear
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    Sep 8th 2014, 9:12 AM

    Property tax
    Water charges
    USC
    ….any if these terms familiar to you????

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    Mute IrishGravyTrain
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:21 PM

    No financial penalty for paying off loans early. Ha ha. We should be getting a discount for paying early.

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    Mute Winston Teardrops
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:30 PM

    Don’t get into finance. I can tell by this one comment that it’s not for you.

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    Mute Tony Skillington
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:51 PM

    We should never have had them in the first place…ffs

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    Mute Peter King
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:23 PM

    Getting a bit annoyed with this sycophantic attitude the government has with Europe.

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    Mute John Deegan
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:38 PM

    What, you feel no surge of patriotic pride when our minister begs the faceless financiers to kindly allow us to give us a big ball of cash?

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    Mute John Deegan
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:39 PM

    * you a big ball of cash *

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    Mute Mike O Neill
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:00 PM
    7
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    Mute Richard Rodgers
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:39 PM

    Peter.
    What a brain and what a genius. Please tell us how yo can save the State a cool three hundred and seventy five million Euro a year as proposed by Minister Noonan so that we don’t have to politely ask our creditors for agreement to vary the terms of our Bailout.
    You must be a whizz with figures and I envy the confidence with which you stride across these pages.
    I showed your comments to a colleague and I could see straight away that he misunderstands you. In tact what he said about you couldn’t be printed here but all great men Peter suffer from such slingshots!

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    Mute Paul Mc
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 8:09 PM

    @Rodgers as per usual your wisdom knows no bounds you and your comments are wasted on the journal.
    Its time you took up your true vocation and that in my humble oppinion is that of chief Fine Gael ass wipe.

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    Mute Richard Rodgers
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 8:22 PM

    Paul
    Thanks! Your opinion in your own words is indeed humble and it is quite clear that you never aspired beyond that though instinct probably told you that there was enough material in you to heft a Sinn Fein shovel but you would need to be told what to do after that.
    The world needs simple folk Paul and at least you have recognised that!

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    Mute Stephen Grehan
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 8:37 PM

    Well said Paul Mc. When Rodgers is in the company of Edna its like a scene from the film The Human Centipede.

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    Mute Thomas Newell
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 9:09 PM

    hows life as the chief arse kisser and male cheer leader to enda and his brigade richard cos clearly you are one of them patriots big nose hogan was on about

    10
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    Mute Kerry Blake
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 9:54 PM

    So Richard hows that seismic shift of Enda the statesman performing these days?

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    Mute Richard Rodgers
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    Sep 3rd 2014, 12:01 AM

    Kerry
    Whaaaaaaaaat?

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    Mute E=MC2
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:58 PM

    When the cost of Noonan’s very generous minster’s pension to which he does not contribute a cent is added to the debt it could be the last straw that breaks the taxpayer’s back.

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    Mute Phillip Hogan
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:23 PM

    Wow, we are so lucky.

    25
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    Mute Alien8
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:53 PM

    Looking at the returns, it is all rosy for Noonan – revenue’s new mantra is to suck every last penny of savings and profit out of small business and their employees and to present it as a gift to some unelected ex-politicians and expect a pat on his obnoxious head.

    “Look what I brought you – someone else’s debt, maybe I’ve ruined a few small businesses and taxed earnings and savings from Irish people to the hilt, but as long as we’re all happy let’s make this look like good news to the ‘media’ – you’ll print it like that, you property funded news website”…

    36
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    Mute Ger Ryan
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 7:29 PM

    At the end of the 1st 1/4 2008 this country was heading towards a deficit of 22bn euros. In d last 5 yrs we have undertaken a huge social experimenr in how to balance d books without strikes/riots etc and we have nearly made it. There is huge credit due to fg and lab and enormous credit due to d dept of finance and public expenditure.

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    Mute Stephen Brady
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 8:52 PM

    Why should lab and fg get any credit. Ff told them what to do before they got booted out.

    11
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    Mute Colin Mccormack
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    Sep 3rd 2014, 3:53 AM

    How is it any credit to them, it’s a credit to the irish people not the politicians. The politicians didn’t stop riots they hid away in Leinster house and quietly stripped us of our pride and dignity and left most of us demoralised and close to bankruptcy. Suicides are through the roof, let’s see these magnificent politicians of yours deal with that elephant in the roof. Crime.? It’s bandit country in ireland again, those shower deserve no credit for anything.

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    Mute Ger Ryan
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    Sep 3rd 2014, 7:22 AM

    The simple fact if the matter is that this country of 4.5million people withdrew over 16bn from circulation over the past 5 years. Politicans put their names forward as spokespeople for that. You didnt. You come on forums and talk abt how bad it is. Pokiticans arent stupid or even greedy anymore. They all know the suicide numbers, the high taxes, the unemployment but they still put their names forward. You didnt. it is easier spew vitriol from d sidelines

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    Mute Alan O'connor
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:06 PM

    More bad news for the Shinners. Tax take up. Ahead of forecast.

    Where are the Shinners anyway?

    I suppose it’s hard for them to spin positives into negatives. Especially when there’s an election coming up. Just doesn’t appeal to voters.

    But it’s all they have.

    21
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    Mute Thomas Newell
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 9:13 PM

    so anyone that has a different opinion to them muppets in power are shinners………explains the mental state of the cheerleaders for the likes of the FG/LB/FF crowd on hear…..deluded one trick ponies who believe anything that comes out of the lot in the dail

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    Mute John Hartigan
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:08 PM

    Election spew has started

    21
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    Mute Nosmo King
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:11 PM

    ” Noonan ” and ” charm ” in the same sentence !! . It is just so wrong, Jack Horgan-Jones. Just so, so wrong.

    16
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    Mute VinHeffer89
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:05 PM

    Will Mr Noonan be dancing suggestively for Mario Draghi et al as well?

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    Mute Susan Adair Farrelly
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 8:54 PM

    Charm?? God help Europe…

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    Mute Jarlath Murphy
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:41 PM

    Jam?………………………………..
    ‘…………………………?…………….
    ……..?………………………………….

    NEVER!

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    Mute DM
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:16 PM

    Why was my two comments deleted?

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    Mute Brehon Law
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    Sep 3rd 2014, 8:16 AM

    Just in time for the general election!

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