<
Church archives will be made available to forensic experts carrying out an excavation at the former mother and baby home in Tuam.
The historical files held by religious orders will be assessed to see if they can help inform what happened in the home when it operated between 1925 and 1961.
Excavation work to identify the remains of infants who died at the Bon Secours Sisters-run home started on July 14 and is expected to take at least two years to complete.
Research by historian Catherine Corless found up to 796 babies were likely buried in a sewerage system where the home stood before it was knocked down in the 1970s.
A commission of investigation report found 978 child deaths associated with the home, but only 51 burial records for children.
The commission said these deaths included children who died at the home and elsewhere after they or their mothers were admitted there.
The excavation is being overseen by the Office of the Director for Authorised Intervention, Tuam (ODAIT), with a forensic team of specialists from Ireland, Canada, Colombia, Spain, the UK and the US.
The office said it has sought access to local parish records and intends to seek records from the Tuam Archdiocese.
Tuam diocesan secretary Fr Francis Mitchell told the Sunday Independent the archdiocese “is happy to provide the ODAIT with records to assist with its work at the site of the former St Mary’s Home”.
Spokesman Fr Patrick Farragher said Tuam parish will “co-operate fully” and make requested records available to investigators.
The Bon Secours Sisters already made its archives available, but said these are small because records it held were handed over to Galway County Council after it closed in 1961.
As a result, just six records were available for nuns to share with Tuam investigators.
The ODAIT has sought access to the material held by the council and is reviewing it.
Any remains recovered during the excavation will be catalogued and cross-referenced with sample DNA being taken from people who believe they are a close relative of a person buried at the site.
About 80 people have come forward to give a sample of their DNA over the last two years and the office is hopeful more people will contact them over the duration of its work.
The intention is to collect these at a later date, but interim arrangements have been made to gather samples from vulnerable or elderly people who came forward. Samples have been collected from just 15 people to date.
Among those due to submit his DNA is University College Cork Professor Thomas Garavan, whose aunt died in the Tuam home in 1936 at the age of one, with the cause of death recorded as being from meningitis. He also has a sample of his mother’s DNA, which will be cross-referenced by the investigation team.
“She went into Tuam home at age one and she died 13 days later. It said on her death cert that she died from meningitis,” Prof Garavan said.
“My mother and all of her six other siblings lived in Tuam at various stages of their lives when they were children. Many of them didn’t know about each other’s existence.
“My mother, Margaret, went in when she was around six and was there until she was about nine-and-a-half when she was boarded out, which meant fostered. She never knew she had a baby sister who died at Tuam until years later, when I started doing some research into the family.”
Prof Garavan began looking into his mother’s family tree in 1981. While his mother believed she had two sisters, he soon uncovered that she had three brothers she never knew of, and another sister, called Teresa, who died in Tuam.
If any remains of his aunt are found, he intends to have her buried alongside his grandmother, also called Margaret, who died in 1981.
“If there is a DNA match and a recovery, I think I will have the child buried next to her own mother in Ballina.
“I think that would be the right thing to do. But I have a jaundiced view of the whole process. They told us it would happen five years ago.
“It has all been at a snail’s pace and I am a little cynical. Let us just see how it plays out.”