Minister asks that councils protect mother and baby home burial sites

The Minister for Children has written to the Minister for Local Government asking that all local authorities put protections in place to prevent development on burial sites associated with former mother and baby homes.

Roderic O'Gorman said he was aware that a further planning application had been lodged with Cork City Council for the construction of more than 460 apartments and creche facilities on the grounds of the former Bessborough home in Ballinure on Cork's southside.

Estuary View Enterprises 2020 Ltd of Glandore has lodged pre-application documents with Cork City Council and it is understood that the proposals involve the demolition of farm sheds and other structures on lands to the south, west and northwest of Bessborough House.

Earlier this year, An Bord Pleanála and the council refused two separate planning applications by a company called MWB Two for a total of 246 apartments in four blocks on a site near a nuns' graveyard and marked on a 1950 trace Ordinance Survey as being a children's burial ground.

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Some 923 infants died either at Bessborough or in hospital after being transferred there from the home between 1922 and 1998, but the Commission of Inquiry into Mother and Baby Homes could only identify the graves of 64 of these infants.

Sensitivities

Asked whether the Government should direct Cork City Council to buy the entire Bessborough site using a compulsory purchase order and designate it as memorial park to all those who died at Bessborough, Mr O’Gorman said he was very conscious of the sensitivities surrounding the site.

“The Government has intervened in terms of the last two planning applications for Bessborough that were impacting on the area of the site that has been identified by the Cork Survivors Alliance and others as a potential burial site,” he said.

“I made a submission to the oral hearing before An Bord Pleanála and I was very pleased that An Bord Pleanála made its decision to refuse planning for the strategic housing development and subsequently Cork City Council made its decision to refuse planning permission as well.”

Mr O’Gorman said that he was particularly conscious of how concerned campaigners were that no development would take place near a folly located at the nuns’ graveyard and the adjoining area previously identified as a children’s burial ground

Protection of lands

He said his department would “continue to engage with Cork City Council in terms of the protection of that land”.

"I have written to Minister Darragh O'Brien, the Minister for Local Government, and I've asked him to engage with all local authorities where there is a mother and baby institution and direct them that in their development plans that they would look at putting specific protections on those sites."

Mr O’Gorman said he understood Cork City Council was currently working on its development plan and he believed there was “a real opportunity there to put a real protection on that site”. He said the council was best placed to identify how to provide such a protection.