The Tuam Mother and Baby Home Alliance, spokesperson Breeda Murphy has described as positive the reaction of her group to yesterday’s apology by Mayo County Council to what happened under its watch to woman and children who were sent to the Tuam Mother and Baby Home.

Mayo county council convened yesterday afternoon in a special session to look at the local authority’s responsibility in what happened to Mayo mothers and babies who were sent to the Bon Secour Mother and Baby Home in Tuam between the 1920s and 1960s.

The 3000 page Commission of Investigation Report into Mother and Baby Homes was published last month and indicated that up to a third of the residents at the Tuam Home, over 40 years, were from Mayo.

Elected councillors and council management all apologised to residents and agreed, post the pandemic, to attend a meeting with survivors of the home and their relatives and to listen to their experiences and stories, first hand.

Breeda asked Mayo County Council to open up access to its administrative records over those years, when county councils were responsible for the County Boards of Health. She called on the local authority to employ an archivist to enhance that access.

This lunchtime Breeda gave her reaction to yesterday’s special meeting to Midwest News