AS Taoiseach Michael Martin promised an apology in the Dáil chamber to those who suffered abuse in industrial schools, a Limerick woman wants him to address the hurt of another group of survivors “who continue to be ignored”.
Ann Connolly, of the We’re Still Here group and a survivor of the Sean Ross Abbey Mother and Baby Home, said “the truth of what happened across Mother and Baby Homes in this State is still being withheld from those of us who lived it”.
Calling on the Taoiseach to unseal records from the homes, she told the Limerick Post that “horrific things happened to women and babies in these institutions”.
“The full truth of how these homes operated, how women and children were treated, and how decisions were made remains hidden. The records that hold these answers have been sealed away for 30 years under current State legislation. Survivors are told this is for our protection. It is not.
“What is being withheld now is not survivor privacy. It is accountability.”
Ann said that “inspections were carried out in Mother and Baby Homes. Reports were written describing conditions of neglect, deprivation, illness, and extraordinarily high infant death rates. Inspectors witnessed sickness, malnutrition and suffering among babies.”
“Those reports were sent to State departments. They were not acted upon. Had they been, lives could have been saved. These inspection reports and the records that followed them are among the files now locked away”.
She said survivors also want transparency on vaccine trials which she claims were “carried out on babies without the knowledge or consent of their mothers”.
“Who authorised pharmaceutical companies to access babies in these institutions? Who gave permission, who oversaw it, and who benefited? The answers to these questions lie in the same sealed records.
“Mother and Baby Homes were hard, cold, uncaring places. Women were confined, controlled, forced to work, shamed, starved and denied proper maternity care. Disease and infection were common. Babies became sick, were left malnourished, and many of them died.
“Those of us born in these homes are still living with that trauma. So are the mothers who were confined there. The grief did not end when the doors closed.”
Redress, Ann said, is not the most important issue, but for a woman held in the home for under six months to be “told that her lifetime of loss and trauma is worth as little as €5,000. That single figure is meant to account for everything. The removal of her child, decades spent not knowing where that child went, whether they lived or died, and a lifetime shaped by grief. That is not compensation. It is a judgment.”
“Survivors are not asking for vengeance. We are not asking for names to be dragged into the open. We are asking for the truth of what was done to us and to our children. We are asking for answers that should never have been taken from us in the first place.
“A State that hides the truth does not honour survivors. It silences them again. A State that locks away the evidence of suffering is not protecting the vulnerable. It is protecting itself.”