More than 900 children’s names read out at protest outside former Cork mother and baby home

The minute’s silence outside the gates of the Bessborough former mother-and-baby home was broken by birdsong and the shrieks of children playing nearby.

A reading of 900 names of children who died there or died after discharge had taken a full 50 minutes. About 60 people gathered at the gates on Sunday to protest the decision by Cork City Council in February to grant planning permission for 140 apartments to be built on what survivors say should be sacred ground.

Between 1922 and 1998, the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary ran Bessborough as a mother-and-baby home.

In that time, 9,768 mothers and 8,938 babies were admitted, and death certificates were issued for 816 Bessborough children, according to the General Registry Office (GRO).

Reported

However, in 2021, the Mother and Baby Homes Commission reported that it was aware of 923 child deaths related to Bessborough, 107 more than the nuns had disclosed to the GRO.

So far, survivors have found the names of 72 of those 107 children, bringing to 888 the number of Bessborough children for whom names are publicly available. The names of 35 of the total 923 children remain unknown. Of those 923, burial records exist for only 64, so the final resting place of 859 is also unknown.

Five years ago, the commission said it was “highly likely” that some of those missing children were buried on Bessborough’s grounds. 

Sacred

After Sunday’s reading, Noelle Brown, a Social Democrats member of Dublin City Council, spoke. Born in Bessborough in the 1960s and adopted at eight weeks, Ms Brown said a debt was owed to the children to keep fighting on their behalf, to prevent the development of their burial ground.

“That land is sacred, so I ask you to stay with us in this fight, because it is a fight, like every single thing to do with these issues, it’s a fight, it’s a battle,” she said.

 “I’m not on that list, I survived. I got out. I’m here. And those infants and children aren’t.

“It’s up to all of us to keep them in our memory, to let them never be forgotten.”

A decision by An Coimisiún Pleanála on two separate appeals against planning permission at Bessborough is due on July 9.