The Tuam babies scandal: A Woman's Hour special
Woman's Hour
BBC
4.1 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 30 September 2024
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For this special edition of Woman's Hour, Nuala McGovern travels to Tuam, County Galway in Ireland to visit the site of a former mother and baby home which came to the world’s attention in 2014. It was revealed that up to 796 babies and young children who died in the care of the nuns who ran the home, had been disposed of in a disused sewage tank. Now, more than a decade since the scandal broke, work is starting on a full excavation.
Nuala has an exclusive interview with Daniel MacSweeney, who is in charge of the excavation, and hopes to provide answers for families who want to give their children a decent burial. She also speaks to the women who uncovered the scandal - Catherine Corless and Anna Corrigan, as well as journalist Alison O'Reilly who broke the story, and to Paul Forde, a survivor of the Tuam home, whose baby sister's remains may be in the mass grave.
If you believe you are related to a child buried in Tuam, please contact Daniel MacSweeney's team. The confidential phone line is 00 353 1 5391777 or email info@dait.ie
The postal address is: Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention, Tuam (ODAIT), Custom House, Flood Street, Galway, H91 XV2C, Ireland.
And we're inviting you to also share your story with us, you can email Woman's Hour via the 'Contact Us' tab above.
Contributors: Catherine Corless, campaigner and Tuam resident Paul Forde, Tuam mother and baby home survivor Daniel MacSweeney, Director of Authorised Intervention at Tuam Anna Corrigan, Tuam Babies Family Group Alison O'Reilly, journalist at the Irish Examiner
Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Sarah Crawley AP/Digital: Claire Fox
Transcript
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| 0:52.0 | Good morning. Welcome to Womons Hour. I've come to the outskirts of the town of Chum in County Galway in Ireland |
| 0:57.0 | to visit the site of a mother and baby home, |
| 1:00.0 | which came to the world's attention long after it closed. |
| 1:04.0 | In 2014, it was revealed that up to 796 babies and young children |
| 1:10.0 | who had died in the care of the nuns who ran the home had been put into a |
| 1:14.7 | disused sewage tank. Test excavations at the site found a significant quantity of |
| 1:21.4 | human remains. The bodies ranged in age from premature babies to children |
| 1:26.3 | age three. And early next year in 2025 a full excavation of the site will begin. The preliminary works for that are starting now. |
| 1:37.0 | I'll be speaking to the man tasked with running this major operation in order to try and provide answers for those families |
| 1:44.8 | who are desperate to give these children a decent burial. I'll also be speaking to |
| 1:50.0 | the woman whose investigation into her own family history helped uncover the Tomb Baby scandal. |
| 1:55.8 | And I'll speak to the journalist who broke the story. |
... |
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