A full forensic excavation on the site of the former mother and baby institution in Tuam, Co Galway, began on Monday morning.
This process will focus on recovering and analysing human remains from the site and will also involve a memorialisation of the deceased.
Ground was broken on the project just after 10.30am, and the excavation expected to take around two years to complete.
“Access to the entire site is now closed off to the public and it is also concealed from view,” the Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention, Tuam confirmed.
RM Block
There will be a 24-hour security presence at the site, with a 2.4 metre high fence also in place.
“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,” said Daniel MacSweeney, who leads the office.
Survivors of the Mother and Baby Home and their families were invited to view the site last Tuesday before access was closed off to allow pre-excavation works to begin.
Anna Corrigan, whose brothers John and William are believed to be two of the nearly 800 children who died in the home, said “today is both welcome and difficult”.
“Whilst it’s a relief to see work started on the site it’s really only the latest stage in what is still a long road for all of us”.
“I won’t rest until I see justice for my two brothers who not only need a proper Christian burial but also the full rigours of the law both domestic and international applied. What happened at Tuam was criminal so there needs to be both Church and State accountability,” Ms Corrigan said.
The excavation begins 11 years after historian Catherine Corless revealed that 796 children died in the institution between 1925 and 1961.
Only two of these children were buried in local graveyards, and a lack of burial records from the institution ran by the Bon Secours sisters indicate that many others may be buried on site.
[ Tuam families can see ‘light at the end of a very long tunnel’Opens in new window ]
Test excavation carried out in 2016 and 2017 found a notable amount of human remains in what seemed to be a disused septic tank at the rear of the site.
The work at the burial site will involve exhumation, analysis, identification if possible and reinterment of the remains at the site.
In 2021, Taoiseach Micheál Martin apologised on behalf of the State for the treatment of women and children who were housed in mother and baby homes across Ireland.
The Bon Secours Sisters also offered a “profound apology” after acknowledging the order had “failed to protect the inherent dignity” of women and children in the Tuam home.
