Bessborough should not be developed, even in housing crisis, Cork TD says

Despite the housing crisis, some sites should not be developed, and the former Bessborough mother and baby institution is one of them, a Government TD from Cork has said.

Séamus McGrath, Cork South Central TD and Fianna Fáil housing spokesperson, said that given Bessborough’s “very dark past” it should be preserved as “a site of conscience”.

Last month, Cork City Council granted planning permission to Estuary View Enterprises 2020 for 140 apartments at Bessborough and many in the survivor community are upset at that decision.

Between 1922 and 1998, the Sacred Heart nuns ran Bessborough, admitting nearly 19,000 mothers and babies.

In 2021, the Mother and Baby Homes Commission reported 923 child deaths relating to Bessborough. 

Records exist for only 64 burials and the commission said it was "highly likely" others are also buried there.

Last week, a protest held outside Leinster House heard that the site is “not an empty field waiting to be filled”. Labour Party city councillor Peter Horgan and Carmel Cantwell, whose brother William died in Bessborough in 1960, have both lodged objections.

On Thursday, Séamus McGrath was one of six Cork representatives who spoke in the Dáil opposing the proposed development, with children’s minister Norma Foley and junior minister Robert Troy representing Government.

Ms Foley noted that Government had previously highlighted to Cork City Council “unresolved questions with regard to the location of burials on the site”.

Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire, Sinn Féin TD for Cork South Central, said it would be “a profound mistake” to treat Bessborough as a historical matter, rather than something which was continuing to cause inter-generational trauma for thousands of people.

“There hasn’t been a frank and honest recognition of the pain that was caused, and I think the most obvious example of that was the heartlessness of the six-month limit for compensation under the Mother and Baby Home scheme, as if the trauma of separation was any less for those who fell under that bracket,” Mr Ó Laoghaire said.

His North Central colleague Thomas Gould said he did not have the time to name on the Dáil record all the children who had died at Bessborough but they should not be erased from history.

“They were not given dignity in life, but they should at least be given dignity in death,” he said.

Eoghan Kenny, Labour TD for Cork North Central, said the State faced a choice between facing its history in full and turning away from it.

“If we choose to turn away, we diminish not just our past but our integrity as a society,” he said.

“Bessborough is not just land; it is a memory and deserves to be treated as such.” Pádraig Rice, Social Democrats TD for Cork South Central, said successive governments had failed survivors.

“This cycle must end. That starts with the Minister intervening to stop this planning application at Bessborough,” he said. “Abuse cannot, and must not, be cemented over.” 

John Paul O’Shea, Fine Gael TD for Cork North West, said the State could choose to listento those it had failed.

“In doing so, we honour those who lived through those experiences and those who did not live to tell their stories,” he said.

People Before Profit-Solidarity TD Richard Boyd cited research by The Echo which established that in 1947 the State abandoned a threatened investigation into nearly 700 deaths at Bessborough.

"It is horrendous what was going on. They did not investigate at the time and the deaths continued, though they reduced," he said.

"The dark stain we are talking about on the history of this State is due to its treatment of women and children, its stigmatisation of women because they did not comply with a twisted notion of morality and then the actual deaths of children, the burial place of hundreds of whom remain unaccounted for. It is unbelievable.

“The thought that we will build on this site, and that the Government will not intervene to make up and compensate for this State's failure of the hundreds of women and children who lie buried in unmarked graves, and for the trauma that has afflicted on the survivors and those affected, is horrendous,” he said.