The remains of a further 22 infants have been found at the site of the former St Mary's mother and baby home in Tuam, Co Galway, bringing the total number of remains recovered to 99, according to investigators.
The investigation, which kicked off in July last year, has so far led to the discovery of the remains of 99 infants at the site. The most recent remains were found between June 1 and July 15, in an area that had been blanketed with gravel and used for vehicle access, with no visible markers to suggest the existence of burials.
Excavation Context and Challenges
The excavation of the former St Mary's mother and baby home in Tuam is striving to identify the remains of infants who passed away at the home between 1925 and 1961. In 2014, research spearheaded by local historian Catherine Corless suggested that 796 babies and young children were interred in a sewage system at the Co Galway institution during that time frame.
The Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention Tuam (ODAIT), which is overseeing the search, confirmed that coffined infants were retrieved and hand-excavation is ongoing. The Identification Programme team gathered an extra seven DNA reference samples during this period, bringing the total number collected to 62.
Previous Discoveries and Director's Remarks
In 2017, a commission discovered "significant quantities" of child and infant remains in subsurface chambered tanks situated in the memorial garden area of the site. Speaking on Wednesday, Daniel MacSweeney, director of ODAIT, said the progress of the project thus far has vindicated the decision not to commence the search in that area.
"To date we have started outside of the memorial garden, in an area where there is a map from a Galway County Council planning file from the 1970s that shows a burial ground, but there's nothing on the surface to indicate that there's any burials there and then when we've excavated there, this is where we found 99 sets of remains, really very closely together," he said.
"So this concentration of remains buried very closely together, is extremely challenging because each burial is an archaeological context of its own and has to be recovered in that way. Then at the other end of the site we've dealt with and resolved a very large area where we found no remains whatsoever.
"So there's all these different elements that are difficult, but I think a year in, I'm quite happy that we've now recovered 99 sets of remains in a place where we didn't really know there were any remains there, so it has, I think, justified our decision not to start with the memorial garden, but to leave it until later."
Forensic Challenges
Dr Niamh McCullagh, senior forensic consultant at ODAIT, explained that numerous factors make the investigation "particularly challenging".
"If I work from the outside in, the challenge of the physical location of the site, it's within a housing estate that is populated with people living there, the rears of their gardens all face onto this playground area," she said.
"The physical situation of the chamber tank where the remains were discovered in that sample excavation, they're over three metres beneath the surface, they're in 20 individual chambers, all adjacent to one another, and that in itself is also a very physically challenging situation.
"So, from an archaeological perspective, it is not like going out and excavating a greenfield site or an open area where we would have a lot more space, we have to try and manage the space that we have to get the access that we need to to recover the remains."
Historical Context
St Mary's home for unmarried mothers and their offspring was operated by the Bon Secours Sisters, a religious order of Catholic nuns. In 2021, Irish premier Micheál Martin issued an apology on behalf of the state for the treatment of women and children who were accommodated in mother and baby homes throughout Ireland.
