Tuam: Works to enable excavation of mass burial site to start

Works are beginning on Monday to allow the excavation of a mass burial site linked to a historic mother and baby institution in the Republic of Ireland.

In 2016, investigators found what they described as “significant quantities of human remains” in underground chambers at the site in Tuam in County Galway.

Tests confirmed the bodies belonged to babies and children up to three years of age.

The former mother and baby institution was run by the Bon Secours Sisters, an order of Catholic nuns, and it closed in 1961.

It provided accommodation for unmarried mothers and their children during a period when women were ostracised by Irish society, and often by their own families, if they became pregnant outside marriage.

The excavation work at the site will be overseen by the Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention (ODAIT), an independent office established under the Irish Institutional Burials Act 2022.

Its objective is to “recover and forensically analyse, and to memorialise and bury with respect and dignity, human remains recovered from the site”.

Family members and survivors of the institution will have an opportunity in the coming weeks to view the perimeter of the “forensically controlled site” to see the works being undertaken.

Daniel MacSweeney from ODAIT said from the start of works on Monday “the entire site, including the memorial garden, would only be accessible to staff carrying out the works.

There will be 24-hour security monitoring.

“The initial four weeks will involve setting up the site, including the installation of 2.4-metre hoarding around the perimeter,” he said.

“These measures are necessary to ensure the site’s forensic integrity and to enable us to carry out the works to the highest international standards that govern the excavation and recovery programme.”

Mr MacSweeney added it was a “unique and incredibly complex excavation”.

“The work is expected to take approximately 24 months to complete,” he said.

“The final timetable will depend on many variables, some of which may only become fully clear as the work progresses.”

The revelations about the burial ground came to international attention when a local historian, Catherine Corlessdiscovered there were death certificates for 796 children and infants, but no burial records.

The Irish government set up a Commission of Investigation into the network of historic mother-and-baby institutions in the country.

It found the chambered structure containing the children’s remains at Tuam was in a disused sewage tank.

The work getting under way at the site on Monday is yet another part of a process of discovery which will once more shine a light on a troubling period of Irish social history.