The inauguration of the restored Holy Angels plot in which about 50,000 babies and children are buried took place yesterday in Glasnevin cemetery.
The previously sunken and unkempt plot has been replaced with communal headstones, gardens and seating areas on the perimeters of a small area of unmarked graves.
Plans to remove all memorial stones, raise the plot with new topsoil and provide one large remembrance headstone for each grave were approved last August by more than 500 parents and relatives, the Irish Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Society and the Dublin Cemeteries Committee.
In her address to the hundreds of people in attendance, President Mary McAleese recognised that in the past many children had been "buried in oppressed silence between dusk and dawn". She said that too often the loss experienced by parents was not acknowledged and that "clinical insensitivity accompanied the eerie silence".
The President referred to her own grandmother who lost a daughter shortly after birth but continued to speak of her 50 years later.
Mrs McAleese added that the newly restored plot was a deserving resting place for the 50,000 children.
The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, said hundreds of thousands of people had been touched by the children buried in the grounds and would not be forgotten.
Poet Christy Kenneally read one of his poems, which has been inscribed in stone in the Holy Angels plot. The Vard Sisters and Mary Black sang during the blessing and inauguration.