Cork city protest rally hears calls for purchase of Bessborough grounds

More than 1,000 people, wearing labels bearing the names of the 923 children whose deaths are associated with Bessborough, heard calls on Saturday for the Taoiseach to order the purchase of the site.

Speakers at a city centre rally called for a memorial park on the 60-acre site where it is feared that hundreds of children, and 19 women, may be buried.

On Friday, Mr Martin told  that he has asked Cork City Council to engage with the owners of the grounds of the former mother and baby institution, with a view to “exploring all options for the future of the site”.

His intervention came after An Coimisiún Pleanála (ACP) cleared the way for the building of 106 apartments on the grounds of the former mother and baby institution.

Last week Cork City Council passed unanimously a motion by Labour Party councillor Peter Horgan that the Government explore the possibility of compulsorily purchasing the Bessborough lands.

On Thursday, nine Cork city Oireachtas members wrote to the Taoiseach calling for the State to acquire the land.

On Friday, Mr Martin described Bessborough as “a place of huge importance and connection for many, many families and people,” and he agreed that a memorial park would be an appropriate use of the grounds.

“We need to do the right thing for all concerned,” he said.

Addressing Saturday’s rally, Carmel Cantwell, of the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home Support Group, said her brother William is one of the 923 children who died after being born in the institution and whose burial place is unknown.

“Like so many families, we carry a grief, we have no grave, no marker and no certainty. That absence is part of Ireland’s history and part of Bessborough’s truth - that is why this land matters,” she said.

Describing the former institution’s grounds as “a landscape of loss”, Ms Cantwell said development could not continue there, and the land must instead be recognised as “a site of national conscience where truth is honoured and suffering is acknowledged”.

Labour Party senator Laura Harmon said Mr Martin’s engagement was welcome, and she called on him to “ensure that this site is protected at all costs” in memory of the nearly 19,000 mothers and children who passed through Bessborough.

Her city council colleague Peter Horgan, who had appealed Cork City Council’s decision to grant planning permission to Estuary View Enterprises for the building of apartments at Bessborough, addressed claims that the grounds would be too costly to buy.

Quoting claims that the land would become “the most expensive public park in Europe”, he cited billions of euro spent over the years on consultants’ reports.

“There are times in this country when money means something to the higher beings in Dublin, and there are times when money doesn’t,” he said.

Noelle Brown, a Social Democrats member of Dublin City Council who was born in Bessborough, described Mr Martin’s announcement as “a nice breakthrough for us”, but she added that follow-through was needed now.

Former Irish Examiner journalist Conall Ó Fátharta, who for years wrote about Bessborough, said it was an incontrovertible fact that the burial places of 19 mothers and 859 infants, whose deaths were associated with the institution, are unknown.

“The Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation concluded that ‘it is highly likely that burials did take place in the grounds of Bessborough’,” he noted.

However, he said that finding was made despite the lack of an extensive investigation of the grounds, and the commission’s archives are now sealed.

“So I ask one simple question: why are the women and children of Bessborough, and indeed any other site, not entitled to the same level of investigation that was rightly done for Tuam?”