Apartment plan for Cork's Bessborough is refused permission

Planning permission has been refused for 280 apartments on the grounds of the former Bessborough mother and baby institution.

Rejecting the proposal by developer Estuary View, An Coimisiún Pleanála — previously An Bord Pleanála — cited concerns about housing mix and the development’s design. The proposed buy-to-sell scheme was one of two large residential developments proposed by Estuary View on separate sites on the former Bessborough estate.

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

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

In previous rulings on two applications relating to one area near the Bessborough folly, beside the nuns’ graveyard, An Bord Pleanála said the potential existed for the presence of human remains and/or burials at those proposed development sites.

Last month, Taoiseach Micheál Martin pledged to work with survivor groups and Cork City Council on the memorialisation of the site.

The proposed 280-apartment scheme, The Meadows, had been intended to be built on the eastern side of the Bessborough site, and included four buildings ranging in height from one to 10 storeys.

Historian and former lord mayor of Cork, Kieran McCarthy, who is an independent councillor for the Cork City South East ward, said he believed that Bessborough needed to become a large-scale memorial site or park.

“I’d like to see the whole space as a prominent commemoration site in our city and in our region,” he said.

“And for this to be pursued for many reasons, yes, as a sincere nod to those whose personal lives are woven to the mother and baby home story, but also as a commemoration lighthouse of the journey Irish history and all its nuances still need to travel.”

Mr McCarthy said he believed the memorial should have the folly at its heart.

Peter Horgan, Labour Party councillor for the Cork City South East ward, said he welcomed the decision.

“Given that this entire site is fraught with emotion and history, we need to put an end to the constant retrenching of concern that is brought whenever an application is provided here,” 

he said.

Mr Horgan also said he believed the entire Bessborough site should become a place of memorial.

Speaking last month at the annual Bessborough commemoration ceremony, now in its 11th year, the Taoiseach 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.