Martin pledges to work with groups on 'memoralisation' at Cork's Bessborough

Taoiseach Micheál Martin has pledged to work with survivor groups and Cork City Council on the memorialisation of a site where children are thought to have been buried on the grounds of a former Cork mother and baby institution.

Mr Martin was speaking on Sunday at the annual Bessborough commemoration ceremony, now in its 11th year.

He paid tribute to his friend, adoption rights advocate and former lady mayoress of Cork, Ursula Shannon, to co-founder of Justice for Magdalenes Research, Mari Steed, who was born in Bessborough, and to John Furlong, the so-called ‘angel of Bessborough’, all of whom passed away recently.

“Nothing can undo the wrong that has been done, but comfort can be brought to those of you today who remember your brothers, your sisters, your family members,” Mr Martin said, in a speech to a gathering of about 120 people.

“Facility and opportunity and space must always be created and provided to enable us to remember, and to atone.” 

Between 1922 and 1998, the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary ran Bessborough as a mother and baby institution, and during that time 9,768 mothers and 8,938 babies were admitted.

According to the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation, some 923 children died at Bessborough or after being transferred from there. Burial records exist for only 64 of those children.

Much of the sprawling former Bessborough estate is now in private ownership, with several developers seeking planning permission to build apartments on the site.

In previous rulings on two applications relating to one area near the Bessborough folly, An Bórd Pleanala said it considered that the potential existed for the presence of human remains and/or burials at those proposed development sites.

Mr Martin said while the potential for burials at Bessborough had been identified in the Cork City Development Plan, there was “unfinished work” relating to existing planning permissions, and because the land was not State-owned.

He said he would work with all concerned on the issue of memorialisation.

“I am not going to make any simple promises or declarations - these things have to be navigated but I will work with Cork City Council, and in terms of the land here, to see how the situation can be unravelled,” he said.

The Taoiseach said the planned national centre for research and remembrance at the site of the former Magdalene laundry on Dublin’s Sean McDermott St will work with local groups on the issue of memorialisation.

Among those in attendance at the commemoration were the Lord Mayor of Cork, Fianna Fáil councillor Fergal Dennehy, TDs Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire and Séamus McGrath, senator Laura Harmon, councillors Mary Rose Desmond, Peter Horgan, John Maher, Ciara O'Connor, and Ted Tynan, Justice for Magdalenes Research advocate and human rights lawyer Maeve O’Rourke and her husband, Labour Party TD Ciarán Ahern, and Caitriona Twomey, volunteer co-ordinator with Cork Penny Dinners.

In a moving speech, Fianna Fáil councillor and former lord mayor Terry Shannon recalled that his late wife Ursula had been described as “a small person with a big footprint”.

Mr Shannon said that “right up until the end” Ursula had continued to help people on the issue of adoption rights.

“She wanted for others what she had for herself, she had a lovely life here in Cork, she had lovely parents, Jim and Sheila O’Keeffe, she was an only child – as we thought – and she was a force of nature,” he said.

Mr Shannon recalled his wife’s arduous search for her birth family, which culminated in an emotional meeting with her brother and sister, Sarah and Dave, “under the clock in Paddington Station”, and later her birth mother Mary, who sadly had developed Alzheimer’s and was in a nursing home.

“She looked at Ursula and she said ‘baby’. It was quite extraordinary,” he said.

“That friendship, that family connection, that love, has endured right up to today.” 

Ursula had wanted that same family connection for other people, Mr Shannon said, and it was that desire which had driven her advocacy.

“Ursula could never take no for an answer, she didn’t understand the concept of ‘No’ or ‘I can’t’, and if the front door was bolted... 

"She’d go around the back, to the back door, and if that was bolted, she would climb in a window.

"She was determined to achieve what needed to be achieved,” he said.

Other speakers included adoption rights advocate and Justice for Magdalenes Research co-founder Claire McGettrick, and Professor Katherine O'Donnell.

The event was MCd by broadcaster PJ Coogan.

Music was provided by Karen Underwood, Christiana Underwood, and Hannah Fitzgerald, and they ended the event with a rousing version of Labi Siffre’s ‘(Something Inside) So Strong’.