The institution at Tuam came to international attention in 2014<\/a>, after local historian Catherine Corless discovered there were 796 death certificates for children and babies who died there, but no burial records.<\/p>\nThe Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention, Tuam (ODAIT) has published its fourth regular update.<\/p>\n
It said it found “graves of child or infant size” at an area on the western edge of the site, where excavations have been carried out under a tent.<\/p>\n
It corresponded to an area labelled as “burial ground” on historical maps of the site.<\/p>\n
ODAIT said: “Despite these historical references, there were no surface or ground level indications of the potential for a burial ground at this location prior to excavation.<\/p>\n
“The presence of burials at this location has now been confirmed.<\/p>\n
“The layout and size of the graves is consistent evidence that, at this part of the site, there is a burial ground from the time of the operation of the mother-and-baby institution.”<\/p>\n
The institution was open from 1925 until 1961.<\/p>\n
ODAIT said it recovered four more sets of human remains in the same area, further to the seven which it had found in its previous update last month.<\/p>\n
It said “initial assessments” indicated that all eleven remains were of infants and they had been in coffins.<\/p>\n
Further analysis is being carried out on the remains.<\/p>\n
The excavations under the tent are being carried out by machine and by hand.<\/p>\n
The area is about 100m from another part of the site where investigators from a government inquiry found “significant quantities” of remains in underground chambers in 2017.<\/p>\n
The Director of Authorised Intervention, Daniel MacSweeney, is leading the team.<\/p>\n
He has previously worked for the International Committee of the Red Cross in operations to recover missing people.<\/p>\n
He told the Irish national broadcaster RT\u00c9 that the confirmation that infant remains were present was “very important”.<\/p>\n
Mr MacSweeney said that 160 people had made contact with a view to giving DNA samples to help identify the bodies.<\/p>\n
He expressed hope that more would now follow, saying: “I know from experience that sometimes the discovery of remains can be a catalyst for people to come forward.”<\/p>\n
The institution at Tuam was owned by Galway County Council and run by a religious order, the Bon Secours Sisters.<\/p>\n
The order has previously acknowledged that children and infants were “buried in a disrespectful and unacceptable way”, and apologised.<\/p>\n
It has contributed \u00a32.14m towards the cost of the excavation.<\/p>\n
Galway County Council also apologised for “failing mothers and children” after the inquiry report in 2021.<\/p>\n
The excavation is expected to continue until 2027, with follow-up work expected to last several more years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An excavation team said it has found evidence of a burial ground at the site of the former…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176802,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-176801","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}