When TD Anne Ferris took to her feet in the Dáil chamber last week it was to speak on a deeply personal matter. The 59-year-old revealed that, up until a fortnight ago, she had "never laid eyes" on her sister: the two women were adopted from different mother-and-baby homes, grew up in different families and ended up living in different countries.
In a poignant address Ms Ferris said that, when they met they “looked like sisters but we didn’t talk like sisters”.
“Where other sisters in our age group have shared experiences and a shared family history, we have just had a very long, long gap in our lives . . . We look very alike but so far that’s the only aspect of our lives that we share.”
Jigsaw puzzle
Ms Ferris went on to describe mother-and-baby homes, adoption practices, the Magdalene laundries, the county homes, private homes, religious organisations and the State as part of a “very large jigsaw puzzle that must be looked at in its entirety”.
Some pieces have already fallen into place due to the work of historian Catherine Corless, whose research into 796 child deaths in the home in Tuam, Galway sparked national controversy and led to the Government establishing an inquiry into mother-and-baby homes.
Since then, The Irish Times has published figures on a number of deaths recorded in contemporaneous local government and public reports and returns filed by the homes with the Department of Health. A further 222 deaths have been documented in the Protestant-run Bethany Home.
Taken together, these records chronicle over 3,000 deaths recorded across seven institutions including Tuam over a period of five decades. but, due to the inconsistency of the records, this is still just part of the picture. What's more, these figures do not take into account deaths which occurredin county homes.
An interdepartmental report published last week showed that 23,707 births were registered across nine mother-and-baby homes between 1922 and 1991 but noted that "many more" children housed in these institutions were born elsewhere.
It cited literature which indicated that over 1,900 children were placed for adoption in other countries, the majority in the US.
The report also confirmed that the bodies of children from mother-and-baby homes were among 474 infant remains used for the purposes of anatomical study by university medical schools (a practice which ceased in the 1960s) and that 123 residents of children’s homes (including mother-and-baby homes) were the subject of vaccine trials in the 1960s and 1970s.
We now know more than ever about a dark chapter of our history. However, organisations including the Coalition of Mother-and-Baby home Survivors (CMABS), Justice for Magdalenes and the Adoption Rights Alliance, along with affected individuals such as Ms Ferris, are calling for the forthcoming inquiry to be comprehensive and inclusive so that the full picture may finally emerge.