Mother and baby home campaigners have vowed to challenge a decision by Cork City Council to grant planning permission for 140 apartments on the site of one of Ireland's most notorious facilities.
Cork City Council has granted planning with strict conditions for 140 apartments on the site of the former Bessborough mother and baby home.
This was despite separate previous development applications for the site being rejected.
Estuary View Enterprises has now been given permission to develop 140 units built across three blocks and comprising a mix of one-and two-bedroom apartments as well as one three-bedroom unit.
However, planning was granted subject to 70 conditions.
Bessborough ranked as one of Ireland's largest mother and baby homes.
It operated from 1922 to 1998.
Over that time, over 9,700 women were admitted.
The Bessborough mother and baby home suffered not only from a frighteningly high infant mortality rate in the 1930s, 40s and 50s but was also the focus of controversial Irish vaccine trials and allegations of arranged adoptions to the US.
Pioneering research by historian Michael Dwyer revealed that 2,051 children drawn from the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary facilities at Bessborough and Sean Ross Abbey in Tipperary were part of secret vaccine trials almost 70 years ago.
Of the more than 900 babies who died at Bessborough or in Cork hospitals having been transferred from the mother and baby home over the course of seven decades, less than 70 have known burial sites.
Campaigners are convinced that the graves of babies remain undiscovered at the site.
They want the entire area preserved for a thorough examination for possible burials before it is considered for some type of special memorial garden and community resource.
Carmel Cantwell said there is widespread opposition to development at the site.
Her mother, Bridget, gave birth to a baby boy called William at Bessborough in 1960.
She was subsequently told by the nuns who ran Bessborough that the baby had died and was buried on the grounds.
"These grounds have never been fully examined," she said.
"Is it too much to ask that the 60 acres surrounding the Bessborough and farm buildings) be preserved as a park in memory of the 923 babies who died there," she said.
She said there are witnesses who recall burials in the area near the farm buildings which are the focus of the development proposal.
Councillor Peter Horgan, who has campaigned for the State to buy back the Bessborough lands, said he was "devastated" by the planning decision.
An appeal against the planning is already under consideration.
Part of the Bessborough site adjoins the Blackrock Greenway which was developed on the old Blackrock railway line.
Mother and baby home campaigners and their supporters have created a moving memorial to the children who died at Bessborough in the form of a collection of soft toys, photos and candles on a walkway near the former facility.
Special vigils are organised near the site to honour those who died and to highlight how mother and babies were treated.