Derry Girls actor Siobhán slams Bessborough apartment plans as 'f***ing disgraceful'

Actor Siobhán McSweeney has slammed the decision by Cork City Council to grant planning permission for 140 apartments on the site of the former Bessborough mother and baby institution as “fucking disgraceful”.

Permission for the apartments was granted by the council’s planning department in February, to Estuary View Enterprises. That decision is currently under appeal to An Coimisiún Pleanála, with a decision due by July 9.

Bessborough was run as a mother and baby institution by the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary between 1922 and 1998, and in 2021, the Mother and Baby Homes Commission reported 923 child deaths relating to Bessborough.

With burial records existing for only 64 of those children, the commission found it was “highly likely” some of the missing 859 children were buried on the institution’s grounds.

Ms McSweeney, a native of Aherla in mid-Cork, is best known for her Bafta-winning turn as as Sister Michael in  Derry Girls, and for hosting The Traitors Ireland.

She has previously attended the annual Bessborough commemoration, and had been due to attend last weekend’s event, but posted on Instagram she had been unable to attend.

“I wish I could be there, but I can’t,” she said, “but what I can do is express my utter disgust and dismay over Cork City Council’s decision to allow apartments to be built on this site.

“It’s fucking disgraceful. It’s really, really shameful. It perpetuates the injustices and shame that have trickled down through the generations of our great country.

"That decision is in line with all the other shit decisions that Irish governments have made.

Ms McSweeney added what she was disgusted by what she called the “attitude” she said had informed the decision to grant planning permission.

“It belies a secret, unchanged hatred for women, for children, for the people of Ireland.

“What I and many other people are asking is very simple, a CPO, a compulsory purchase order, an investigation into the atrocities that happened there, an excavation of any remains that are there,” she said.

Last Sunday’s annual commemoration heard some survivors and their supporters are willing to chain themselves to diggers should An Coimisiún Pleanála uphold the decision to permit building on the site.

In Bessborough’s 76 years as a mother and baby institution, 9,768 mothers and 8,938 babies were admitted there.

In the period between 1922 and 1945, when the State chief medical adviser Dr James Deeny temporarily closed the institution, 659 children died at Bessborough. Marasmus — severe malnutrition — was a recurring cause of death.

By the early 1940s, the death toll of children in Bessborough became so high it affected the national infant mortality rate. At the time, Britain — embroiled in the Second World War — had an infant mortality rate of 4.9%. Ireland’s rate was 6.6%.

Between April 1943 and March 1944, 124 babies were either born at Bessborough or admitted there after birth, while 102 children were officially certified as having died there, with inspection reports citing an 82% infant mortality rate in the home.