Nearly €260,000 has been spent to date on preparation work for the exhumation of the remains of 796 babies buried in Tuam, a new report has revealed.
The children died between 1925 and 1961 in appalling conditions and were buried in a septic tank on the grounds of the former Bons Secours-run institution in Co Galway.
The majority of the funds was spent on hiring specialist staff for the Office of the Director of the Tuam Intervention.
The overall budget secured for the entire project stands at €7m.
The figures were published on the Department of Children’s website after they were submitted by the director Daniel MacSweeney as part of his first annual report.
The Cork man was appointed to oversee the Intervention of the Tuam babies burial site last year.
The report said: “The Minister secured an allocation of almost €7m for ODAIT in 2023.
“However, as the director was only appointed in May 2023 and the work of the Office was in the preparatory phase, the allocation was revised downwards to €432,000 later in the year.
“The expenditure in 2023 was just over €257,000.
Preparation work got underway last year, ahead of the proposed exhumation in February 2025.
The long-awaited work is part of the Institutional Burials Act 2022, which will see the exhumation of the 796 Tuam Babies who died in a former mother and baby home.
In June the revealed that the Office of Public Works had advertised for a tender to begin works. Mr MacSweeney told the that providing 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, is being overseen by the Office of Public Works.
The process for the exhumation will be done in four phases:
A 12-week tender phase overseen by the Office of Public Works
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 to 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”.