The long-awaited exhumation at the Tuam mother and baby home where 796 babies are believed to be buried is set to begin in February 2025.
The go-ahead to start the process at the controversial burial site has been confirmed by the Director of the Intervention at the Galway site, Daniel MacSweeney.
It will be the first ever mass grave excavation to take place in Ireland and could pave the way for other similar exhumations at other similar burial sites across the country.
In 2014, it emerged that the deceased children, who were incarcerated with their mothers — most of whom were unmarried — at the Bons Secours run institution, died in appalling circumstances during its operation from 1925 to 1961.
Mr MacSweeney said that providing that no issues emerge during the three different phases of the construction process, he hopes that the intervention will take place in February 2025.
“The complexities of this project cannot be underestimated," he said. “We have one chance to get this right and we must have all the elements in place to be ready and this is what we are doing. A huge amount of work has already been done."
A tender for a consultant engineer to begin preliminary works at the burial site which is located in the middle of the Dublin Road housing estate in Tuam, Co. Galway, was advertised by the Office of Public Works on Friday.
The process for the exhumation will be done in four phases:
A 12-week tender phase overseen by the Office of Public Works which begins today.
An eight-week preliminary phase which will see a construction engineer examining the site from September.
An eight-week design phase.
Providing no major issues arise, the exhumation of the Tuam babies can begin in February 2025.
Mr MacSweeney said: “One of the key things is this is not like building a house with a front door and different rooms. We simply do not know what we will find in these stages of the process.
“We know there are human remains in one place (the green area), but there may be human remains in other places around the site in Tuam (the playground and car park).
Detailed information and reports will be gathered during each phase of the process, which will be provided to Mr MacSweeney and his team.
On Friday morning, the Government’s Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention Tuam posted the notice for tender to being the process saying the purpose is to “restore dignity in death and, where possible, to identify and individualise those human remains dating from the era of the institution 1925-1961 recovered at the site of the former Mother and Baby Institution in Tuam, Co Galway."
This independent office was established by the Government to oversee what it termed the “important and highly sensitive work of ensuring the children’s remains at the site of the former Mother and Baby Institution in Tuam are recovered and re-interred in a respectful and appropriate way”.
It is 10 years since it emerged that 796 children died in appalling circumstances at the former mother and baby home in Galway during its operation.
Their causes of deaths included deformities, heart conditions, whooping cough and influenza and their burial in a septic tank caused outrage across the world and forced the government to establish a Commission of Inquiry into mother and baby homes.
The Commission’s final report published in January 2021 revealed up to 9,000 children died in similar circumstances in other religious-run institutions across the country including Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea, Co. Tipperary, Castlepollard in Co. Westmeath and Bessborough in Co. Cork.
The homes were established because it was considered a sin and shameful to have a baby outside wedlock. Many of the babies were adopted against the mother’s wishes.
In 2014, Galway historian Catherine Corless uncovered the names of the children who died in Tuam as well as their causes of death. It also emerged that the children were buried in a disused cesspit where they remain today.
Tender documents by the OPW for the works at the site show that the “desired outcomes” of the project are to forensically excavate the site in its entirety and to recover all human remains there.
Overall, the project is set to take 192 weeks, with a “construction” phase lasting 104 weeks which is when the bulk of the work will be done.
The office said a preliminary estimated cost for the project is not known at this stage. It also noted that a key constraint of the process is the need to show dignity, “to design and complete works in a sensitive, respectful and dignified manner, acknowledging the presence of existing human remains buried on site and the importance of this site to families of the deceased”.
The Institutional Burials Act 2022 allows for the grounds of the former mother and baby home to be excavated.
The news of the proposed timeline for the intervention has been welcomed by campaigners who brought the scandal to light. Catherine Corless who uncovered the names of the 796 babies said: “I’m just overwhelmed with the news.
“When I see the extent of the work Daniel MacSweeney and his team had to do, we have no idea of the amount of work they have done over the past year. Everything is going well just as he planned.
“To think they are going in there in September to start the testing, it makes it real. For 10 years we have said ‘will it happen?’ and now it is."