Um holocausto irlandês

The Irish government has bowed to pressure to set up an official inquiry into deaths and abuse at homes for unmarried mothers after it found 4,000 infants had been buried in unmarked graves at institutions where morality rates ran as high as 50 per cent.

The inquiry was announced with anger growing over official inaction in the face of revelations that infants had been buried in a mass grave behind a convent-run mother and baby home in Tuam, County Galway where 796 children died over a 30-year period.

Enda Kenny, the prime minister, said unmarried mothers were treated as an “inferior sub-species” as he declared the investigation would revealed a shameful past. “This was Ireland of the '20s to the 60s - an Ireland that might be portrayed as a glorious and brilliant past, but in its shadows contained all of these personal cases, where people felt ashamed, felt different, were suppressed, dominated,” he said.

Charlie Flanagan, the childrens minister, said the inquiry would be charged with investigating burial practices, high mortality rates, forced adoptions and clinical trials of drugs on children in four suspect homes.

In addition to the home in Tuam, so-called “little angel” plots will be investigated at Sean Ross Abbey, Tipperary, Bessborough, Co Cork, and Castlepollard, Co Westmead.            

The Hollywood movie, Philomena, which tells the story of Philomena Lee and her lost son Michael was based on events at Sean Ross Abbey.
Infant mortality rates ranged from 30-50 per cent in some of the homes in the 1930s and 1940s.
“Tuam will not be looked at isolation,” Mr Flanagan said. “It’s time for sensitivity rather than sensationalism.
"We have to consider other issues relating to adoption and the legal circumstances surrounding adoption. There is (also) the issue of clinical trials."
No excavation has taken place yet at the site or bodies found.
The Catholic and Protestant churches that had any involvement with the homes, or links to religious orders which ran them, are to be asked to open all their records.
Health authorities were given files from many orders after the institutes closed.
Mr Flanagan said he would like the inquiry to be carried out in public even though documents which are private and personal would have to be examined.
“I’m seeking national consensus and I’m asking people to buy into this process so we at last get to the truth,” he added.
The move follows new research that shows 796 children, from newborns to a nine-year-old, died in a home run by the Bon Secours order of nuns in Tuam between 1925 and 1961.
Historian Catherine Corless, who made the discovery, says death records from the home show the children died from malnutrition and infectious diseases, such as TB and measles.
There are no burial records for the children, leading many to believe a mass grave in a disused septic tank discovered in 1975 near the home was the children's final resting place.
The issue of "Mother and Baby" homes gained wider attention thanks to last year's Oscar-nominated film "Philomena" starring Judi Dench and Steve Coogan.
There were many such homes in 20th century Ireland, accommodating women who became pregnant outside of marriage and who were ostracised by the conservative Catholic society of the time.
Conditions were harsh in the homes, with high mortality rates. Most babies were taken from their mothers and adopted or fostered. The Telegraph