Tuam mother and baby home excavation team to spend over €4m on forensic specialists

The team behind the excavation of the former grounds of the Tuam mother and baby home is set to spend up to €4.3m on forensic specialists as it seeks to recover and analyse remains found on the site.

In a new request for tender, the Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention Tuam said it was enlisting forensic anthropologists, odontologists, archaeologists, photographers, and human osteoarchaeologists as part of the work that is set to continue until at least June 2027.

“The main objectives of the intervention can be summarised as affording dignity to the children who were manifestly inappropriately interred at the Tuam site by reburying them in a respectful manner and, if possible, identifying them and establishing circumstances and causes of death,” the office said in tender documents.

Last month, the Irish Examiner reported that four more sets of human remains of infants at the site in Galway “from the time of the operation of the Mother and Baby Institution” had been identified.

That brought to 11 the number of infant remains recovered since works began last July.

Personal items dating from the period of the home’s operation between 1925 and 1961, including shoes, spectacles and glass baby bottle feeders, have also been recovered.

The exhumation is expected to take at least 24 months. However, the director of the intervention, Daniel MacSweeney, has previously said it may take longer depending on what is uncovered.

A further ministerial order will be required for the office to continue its work beyond June 30, 2027. It is believed the bodies of 796 infants could be buried at the site.

Test excavations in 2016 and 2017 showed the children were largely buried in a large disused sewage system, which is now subject to the country's first-ever mass grave exhumation.

“At the end of the process, the director will either return remains to family members or arrange for a respectful re-interment in consultation with family members,” the office said.

In the interim, it will require full-time laboratory analysts, forensic photographers, forensic archaeologists, and forensic anthropologists to work on the site.

Some of the experts will be paid up to €500 a day for work on the site.

Work at the site paused for the Christmas and New Year period, but resumed in January. The next update on progress at the site is due to be issued in early February.