Eighty people have come forward to share their DNA to help identify the Tuam Babies, as excavation work begins to finally lay them to rest with dignity.
Described as a uniquely complex project, the team overseeing the excavation says their mission is to “restore dignity in death, and where possible, to identify those inappropriately buried” on the grounds of the former Mother and Baby Home.
The excavation’s challenges were outlined at a recent media briefing by Daniel MacSweeney, Director of Authorised Intervention Tuam (ODAIT ), and Dr Niamh McCullagh, ODAIT’s Senior Forensic Consultant.
“The first objective is to recover all of the human remains from the site where they are manifestly inappropriately buried and rebury them with respect and dignity, following a consultative process with families where possible,” MacSweeney told journalists gathered in Tuam on Monday, July 7.
“This will be challenging for many reasons,” he said. “We also intend to reassociate or individualise human remains that may be commingled. We seek to identify those human remains, but this depends on DNA being recoverable and family members coming forward to give DNA. We will work to establish the causes and circumstances of death.”
To date, DNA samples have been taken from only 14 people under current guidelines, which prioritise the elderly or vulnerable. However, MacSweeney confirmed that 40 to 50 people have come forward over the past two years, with a further 30 donors in recent weeks ahead of the excavation’s start next Monday.
The Bon Secours order, which ran the institution, is cooperating with the investigation and has handed over its records. “There are lots of files and archives we will be looking at in addition to the Bon Secours’,” MacSweeney said. “Galway County Council had a very big role to play, and there are files in various Government departments we are reviewing.”
Scope of the excavation
Due to begin imminently, the excavation poses unique challenges because of the volume of foetal and children’s remains buried close together in what was a sewage tank.
The excavation team spent the last two weeks training with forensic experts in Ireland and abroad on identification techniques. These techniques have been developed in partnership with world-leading experts in osteology of infant and juvenile human remains, Professor Rebecca Garland and Dr Claire Hudson. Due to the circumstances of burial and the age of the babies and children interred in the former sewerage system, one of the techniques used will include a new biochemistry method, which has been developed with the Tuam excavation in mind and will assist in assigning “biological sex through analysis of peptides in tooth enamel”.
“We are dealing with a commingled set of infant and children’s remains, and this means that their bones have lost their skeletal order,” explained Dr McCullagh. “The execution method, together with other non-DNA analysis methods, will be crucial to reassociate the remains into single skeletal sets. This will, in turn, give these individuals the potential to be identified. Very significantly, it will give them the chance to be buried as individuals.”
Dr McCullagh previously led the preliminary excavation in 2016/2017, which confirmed the presence of remains ranging from 35 foetal weeks to around three years old, radiocarbon dated to the home’s operation between 1925 and 1961.
“Nine years later, here we are. This time, the State has acknowledged and formally accepts this evidence in the provision of legislation and resources to support the recovery of these infants and children. The legislation also allows ODAIT to determine if there are remains of other children or residents potentially present at the site.”
Broadening the search
Under ODAIT legislation, a large section of land surrounding the Memorial Garden will also be excavated to ensure any additional remains are recovered. The outlined boundary covers approximately 22 per cent of the former Mother and Baby Home site, much of which is now built over.
“We have a site which represents about 22 per cent of the original site of the Mother and Baby Home,” MacSweeney told the Advertiser. “In 2016/2017, the test excavation on a tiny part of this much bigger site revealed what we now know, which is that there are human remains in the subsurface chamber tanks, but we just don’t know yet what else is in there.”
The Tuam Babies story became an international headline following the work of local historian Catherine Corless, who revealed the lack of burial records for some 796 babies born in the institution and believed to have been improperly laid to rest in a septic tank. For their families, this excavation offers long-awaited closure. However, preliminary excavations indicate that potentially far fewer babies are buried in the Memorial Garden area alone.
“From test excavations, we can’t tell how many sets of human remains are there, but there is potentially far less than the 796,” said Dr McCullagh. “That is why the entire site is being excavated. At the end, we will be able to say every centimetre has been excavated and resolved.”
MacSweeney echoed this, stating that while 796 is an indicative list, it is impossible to determine if all will be found. “We have to deal with this based on what we find. Forensic recovery means we will maximise our chance of identification, individualisation, and establishing the causes and circumstances of death. Particularly, the individualisation is an important part of restoring dignity, and that is really what we are trying to do.”
Dr McCullagh confirmed there are no plans to dig in the gardens of homes built atop the former institution.
The excavation, expected to take 18 months to two years, will begin in the top right corner of the site and gradually move across, leaving the Memorial Garden to be excavated last.
“We simply don’t know what is beneath the surface of the site as a whole,” Dr McCullagh said. “Because we don’t know what is there, there is a very complex response required. We don’t want to track heavy machinery over areas where we don’t know what lies underneath.”
Any remains discovered during the excavation will be taken to a temporary secure facility in Headford before being moved to the excavation’s laboratory and investigation facility when it is ready for use in early 2026.
Providing closure
For Anna Corrigan, the upcoming excavation will provide long-awaited closure and answers regarding her two brothers, William and John, who are among the nearly 800 babies speculated to be buried at the site.
Corrigan’s mother, Bridget Dolan, was one of thousands of women to pass through the institution during its years in operation, giving birth to two sons: John Desmond Dolan, born on February 22, 1946, and William Joseph Dolan, born on May 21, 1950. Ostracised by her community and pressured to enter the institution due to being unmarried during her pregnancies, Bridget passed away in 2001, taking the story of her time in Tuam to her grave. It was only in 2012, while researching her family history, that Corrigan discovered she had two older brothers born in Tuam.
She was later told that both her brothers died as babies, but no death certificate was ever issued for William, and John’s death was not medically certified. For Corrigan, the excavation will finally answer the hard and painful question of whether her brothers did die in the home, or whether they, as she suspects, were illegally adopted internationally.
“They got no dignity in life and they got no dignity in death,” said Corrigan while attending the site of the excavation on Monday. “For now, I don’t know if my brothers are part of the 796. Time will tell.”
Local support
With the playground and green recreational facility, which formerly served the local community part of the excavation site, the ODAIT has ensured that local residents, alongside the institution’s survivors and family members of the Tuam Babies, are kept up to date as the project progresses.
“We have had very positive feedback from the local residents,” said MacSweeney.
“We have really made an effort to keep people informed and let them know what is happening, and I think, in return, we have received really great support from the people of Tuam.”
Echoing these sentiments, Dr McCullagh later said, “I think it must be extremely challenging for the people who live alongside the site and I think people in the town of Tuam must find this very challenging, that their home place has become the focus of such intense media scrutiny and the name of their hometown has become synonymous.
“But what I would say to that is, one of my goals in this process is to return some positivity to the space and to return some positivity to the town of Tuam. This is setting the bar for how people should be treated and how things can be done, and so it will become a benchmark for positivity while trying to resolve these very complex situations.”
The ODAIT will continue to provide updates to the community through media briefings monthly from August.
