How many women had their children taken from their arms and given for adoption at the old mother-and-baby home in Castlepollard, Co Westmeath, is impossible to know.
In the 1950s the building, which now houses St Peter's Hospital, was home to unmarried mothers who were put to work by the nuns and frequently signed away all rights to their children, who were then dispatched to childless couples.
Decades later young American men and women make emotional returns to this building, once run by the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary.
With little or no memory of their short stay within its walls, they come to the midlands town to search for, and in some cases meet, their natural mothers.
Careful and painful trawls through the documents containing details of their past lead other adopted children raised in Ireland to make similar journeys to this and other buildings all over the Republic.
As the adoption debate intensified in recent years, much was heard from adoptive parents, adult adoptees and professionals involved in the process. The voice of the birth mother has not been as loud.
The formation last July of the Natural Parents' Network of Ireland, which represents parents whose children were placed for adoption in Ireland since 1952, is beginning to change all that.
Formerly the Irish Birth Mothers' Association, the new group is lobbying for an "open" adoption process and wants to prevent the recurrence of the harrowing stories which it believes were caused by wrapping adoption in secrecy.
Its chairwoman, Ms Bernie Harold, who lives in Lanesboro, Co Longford, hears many stories of loss and dispossession. "In one case a woman was told that her child of almost two would be going away the following morning and to have him dressed by a particular time. That was it."
This particular man is aged 33 now and in the United States. His mother has spent nearly five years looking for him.
"The sad thing is that there is hardly a family which has not been touched in some way by these sorts of adoptions, where people were not counselled and had no choice in the matter. They went to a mother-and-baby home, left a few weeks after the baby was born, and were expected to move back into their normal life, just as if nothing had happened. For years and years afterwards they would have denied ever having a baby."
The assessment procedures for adoptive parents and the role played by social workers are now being vigorously debated. The often-conflicting rights of adopted people and their adoptive parents concerning the tracing of natural parents is another thorny issue.
About 40 people regularly attend NPNI meetings, some in their early 30s; others in their 70s. As the social climate changes, more mothers whose children were adopted want help to find the children they gave birth to.
Within the past fortnight alone, 10 women in the midlands have made contact with the NPNI. So far no fathers of adopted children have come forward, but the group is hopeful this will happen. "A lot of the women who had babies which were adopted ended up marrying the man and never having any more children," says Bernie. "I think that's terribly sad."
Despite media attention to the problem, tracing children placed for adoption in Ireland during the 1950s and 1960s is still frustrating. Many had their identities changed and their birth records officially declared secret. Of these, about 2,000 were sent to the US.
Inadequate records and the fact that people involved in negotiating adoptions are often now long dead are obstacles a natural mother faces if she hopes to find her child. Most women who seek help from social workers in tracing their children must wait a year before the search can begin.
One woman who contacted the NPNI and who had given birth to a baby boy at a mother-and-baby home in Sean Ross Abbey, Roscrea, Co Tipperary, was recently told no record could be found of her ever having been there. She believes her son grew up in the US.
"One woman who was born at Castlepollard and brought up in America spent years looking for her mother and when she finally found her and got here, she discovered from the woman's family that she had died just a short time before," says Bernie.
"There was also a mother who tried to find her son in America and then found he had died in an accident some years before. That must be devastating."
The NPNI is campaigning for reform of the 1952 Adoption Act, in which so much "State-enforced secrecy" was enshrined. Instead, it wants an "open" process, in which adopted children are provided with information about their birth mothers and vice versa.
This would include sending photographs of adopted children to their natural parents every few years and some non-identifying information about their welfare, an approach already being taken by some contemporary adoption agencies.
A contact register would also be established to end the fears that many natural parents carry with them daily about what may have become of their children.
The collective experiences of the natural mothers she meets and meetings with adult adopted people have made Bernie Harold feel that the "matching" of children with adoptive parents was not approached with care in the past.
She wants to see children sensitively matched with the parents they are being given to, even down to "how they look" and their "social standing". This kind of tailoring of children to adoptive families would help them build relationships with their natural parents later, she thinks.
But most of all the changes being sought by the organisation would help adult adopted children and their natural parents search for each other and reunite openly.
"The women who come to us are so grateful, because these are people who have lived a lie for 20 years or longer. In a lot of cases they would not have told their husband or their children about it, although when they do, they often get fantastic support. But they have been trained to be afraid," says Bernie.
The era of the bleak mother-and-baby homes run by the religious orders has long gone, and some adoption agencies are operating a more open process.
"There is no doubt that Irish society needs a good shake-up and has to start accepting things as they are now, and not as they would like them to be," says Bernie.
"Part of the Irish pysche is `As long as I don't know about it, I can handle it.' It is time we grew up as a race and took responsibility for things."