A survivor of the Sean Ross Abbey mother and baby home at Roscrea, Co Tipperary, has expressed shock that a recently published report made “no mention” of 1,090 babies who died there, with “no call for excavations, no investigation into where these babies are buried”.
Ann Connolly said the religious order that ran the home “handed over 269 death certificates, but we know that at least 1,090 babies died. What happened to the rest?”
Her open letter to “every TD, senator and media outlet in Ireland” referred to the first report from special advocate for survivors of institutional abuse, Patricia Carey, published on June 24th.
Ms Carey was appointed in March 2024 as part of the Government’s response to the final report of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation, published in January 2021.
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Ms Connolly, recalling how she and survivor advocate Michael Donovan had met Ms Carey at Sean Ross Abbey, said they had asked her to raise “the need to excavate anomalies found on the grounds” there with Norma Foley, who was then minister for education, and the Government.
They had spoken to her about “the existence of an underground tank in the Angel’s Plot, and the urgent need to lift its cover and examine it for possible human remains. Council maps that don’t match what’s on the ground and must be rectified”, she said.
“Yet none of this is mentioned in Patricia Carey’s report. That silence speaks volumes,” Ms Connolly said.
“How is something so heartbreaking and urgent left out of her official report?
“There are women now in their 70s and 80s who are coming to the end of their lives. They still don’t know where their babies are. This should have been the number one priority in any report written on behalf of survivors.”
She also described as “tokenism” a recommendation in the report that four survivors be appointed to a steering group for the proposed National Centre for Research and Remembrance.
“If this centre is going to mean anything, it should be shaped, staffed and run by survivors,” she said.
On redress, Ms Connolly said the public had been led to believe “that survivors received large sums of compensation” whereas “if you were in a mother and baby home for 180 days you qualify for just €5,000” while “one missing day means you’re excluded from redress”.
Emphasising that the issue was not about money, she said “this is about being recognised. About being treated with dignity. About not being dismissed and disqualified yet again”.
The State and religious orders “tore us from our mothers and stripped us of our identities, now they are denying us even the basic recognition of our suffering”, Ms Connolly said.
In response, Ms Carey said she was in full support of survivors who were calling for dignified burial and memorialisation.
“I agree with the concerns raised in respect of the immediate and urgent need for dignified burial and the sensitive treatment of mass graves, unmarked graves and sites of burial across institutions in Ireland. I am in full support of survivors who have been calling for this to be addressed by the State for decades,” she said.
In her report Ms Carey recommended the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme should be extended “to those currently excluded from redress”.
The present “restrictive eligibility requirements” enforced a “hierarchy of suffering” according to “arbitrary criteria” that perpetuated “the harm caused by the State and the church”, it said
It called for survivors to have full, unredacted access to all their records and for legislation to compel religious orders and church authorities to hand over all records related to institutions and forced family separation
The report also called for an independent investigation into vaccine trials “conducted without consent” on thousands of children.
There should also be greater ease of access to Irish passports for those trafficked abroad for adoption, with more supports and resources made available for survivors living overseas, particularly in the UK and US, it said.
