Catherine Corless said she is “so relieved” the long-awaited excavation of the Tuam babies site in Co Galway will begin on Monday, but never thought the process would take this long.
The excavation will take place 11 years after her original research revealed that 796 children died at the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home between 1925 and 1961.
A lack of burial records indicated the children could be buried on the site. Just two children were buried in local graveyards.
Ms Corless said the enormity of the latest development is “just beginning to dawn on me now, it has taken a while to sink in”.
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Speaking to the Irish Times on Wednesday, she said that, when she published her research over a decade ago, she thought the site would be excavated much sooner.
When a test excavation in 2017 discovered a significant amount of human remains in what appeared to be a decommissioned sewage chamber, Ms Corless said she thought “this is it”.
“I thought the Government or the Church or the Bon Secours, somebody, would take over. But it all went haywire,” Ms Corless said.
“I thought my work was done, instead of that I had to fight harder and harder.”
Ms Corless said families whose loved ones may be buried in Tuam are “so, so relieved” the work is finally set to begin.
Anna Corrigan, whose two brothers John and William Dolan might be buried at the site, said today has been “very emotional”.
“It feels like there is a light at the end of the tunnel,” Ms Corrigan told The Irish Times.
“I know in my heart of hearts, we may not find all the children. At least it’s a start, at least they are being acknowledged now.”
The families involved were invited to visit the site over the last few weeks, as from next week there will be a 2.4-metre hoarding around the perimeter and 24-hour security.
The families will have an opportunity to view the site works as part of a Family and Survivors Day that the Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention, Tuam (ODAIT) is holding on July 8th.
The director of the exhumation, Daniel MacSweeney, said the process is likely to take two years and will be a “unique and incredibly complex excavation”.
In 2015, the then-government established the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes to examine what happened to women and children in those institutions from 1922 to 1998.
As part of the test excavation in 2017, tests conducted on the bodies revealed that those who died were between 35 foetal weeks and three years of age, and their deaths dated from the time that the mother and baby home existed.
The commission concluded: “The combination of an institutional boarding home and commingled interments of juvenile remains in a sewage treatment system is a unique situation, with no directly comparable domestic or international cases.”
In October 2018 the government announced that it would introduce legislation to facilitate a full excavation of the site.
As part of the upcoming excavation process, a multidisciplinary forensic team was recruited.
The Sisters of the Bon Secours have offered to give €12.97 million to the Government’s redress scheme for survivors of mother and baby institutions.
In 2021 it issued an apology stating that the children involved were buried in a “disrespectful and unacceptable way”.
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The congregation’s area leader, Sr Eileen O’Connor, acknowledged the order was “part of the system in which they suffered hardship, loneliness and terrible hurt. We acknowledge in particular that infants and children who died at the home were buried in a disrespectful and unacceptable way. For all that, we are deeply sorry”.
