Relatives of the Tuam babies have described as “laughable” comments made by Fr Brendan Kilcoyne who praised the nuns that ran the former mother and baby home.
The former priest and diocesan secretary of Tuam criticised the excavation of remains underway and said, “a fortune of money” was being used to pay for it and that the care provided by the Bon Secours nuns at the time was “outstanding”.
The country’s first ever mass exhumation began on July 14 and is expected to take at least 24 months.
The intervention team will oversee the forensic analysis of the children’s remains 11 years after it emerged that 796 children died in the home between 1925 and 1961 and are believed to be buried in a disused sewage tank on the grounds.
Speaking to the Irish Examiner, UCC Professor Thomas Garavan, whose aunt is one of the babies who died there, said Fr Kilcoyne’s comments are an “insult” to families and survivors.
“I would have expected more evidence-based analyses supported by historical evidence, greater objectivity, and most of all compassion,” he said.
His argument that the Government report was ‘first class’ is laughable. The report is widely maligned for its methodology and failure to include the voices of those who experienced great suffering in mother and baby homes.
Mr Garavan’s 93-year-old mother Margaret is a survivor of the Tuam home and was separated from her six siblings who were all put into the institution and were not told about each other.
Fr Kilcoyne was speaking on his podcast, The Brendan Option last month when he said there was an “outrageous myth” that the children had “met an untimely end through bad action”.
He praised the Bons Secours nuns and said he did not believe there was any “bad action”.
“We are now about to spend two years and a fortune of money excavating every single piece of human remains in an area where it was always known human remains were buried,” he said.
Mr Garavan said Fr Kilcoyne “ignores a number of important well-established facts”.
“For starters, the Bons Secours nuns have issued an apology for the way they looked after the children,” he said. “There is also a significant amount of survivor reports indicating that the opposite was the case.
Children suffered from malnutrition; they had to sleep in dreadful conditions and most important of all many of them had to work within the home.
“He also conveniently ignores the fact that the State paid the Tuam home to look after these children. They clearly failed in their duty”.
The professor said he was appalled at Fr Kilcoyne’s approach and said: “He has chosen to seek to protect the Church and religious institutions and is captured by his own institution and is unable to show empathy and understanding.”
Fr Brendan Kilcoyne has been contacted.