Mayor of County Cork apologises over Bessborough Mother and Baby Home Linehan Foley says ‘sorry to the mothers and babies who suffered and continue to suffer’
Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 11:52 Updated: Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 12:11
The Mayor of Cork County, a survivor of the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home in Cork, has apologised on behalf of Cork County Council for failing to ensure that women who had their babies there were properly cared for.
CllrMary Linehan Foley, who was born in Bessborough in Cork city in 1966 and later adopted by a family in Youghal, on Friday issued the apology on behalf of Cork County Council as Bessborough was within the county’s jurisdiction for many of its years of operation, from 1922 to 1998.
Commission questions view that no one knows where infants are buried in home In 1943, 75% of children born at Bessborough Mother and Baby home in Cork died before they turning one
Tue, Jan 12, 2021, 19:09
Roderic O’Gorman: he has written to An Bord Pleanála asking it to “take account” of “unresolved questions” about possible burials on the Bessborough site. Photograph: Dara Mac Donaill
The Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes expressed doubt that a religious order had no knowledge where the majority of some 900 babies who died at its institution were buried.
Bessborough in Blackrock, Cork, was run by the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary from 1922 until 1998, with 9,768 women and 8,938 children passing through it. Of those children some 923 died as infants.