LONDON (PA) – The Prime Minister of Ireland on Wednesday issued a formal state apology to thousands of unmarried women and their children who have endured pain, shame and stigma in church-run institutions, saying his government is determined to start correcting the country’s mistakes. .
Prime Minister Micheal Martin’s apology came a day after the final report of an investigation said 9,000 children died in 18 mother and baby homes – which housed women and girls who became pregnant out of wedlock – in twentieth century. The investigation was part of an overwhelming Roman Catholic process in Ireland, where church-run institutions were often linked to a history of abuse.
Martin said Ireland must recognize the scandal as part of its national history and “show us deep remorse”. He apologized on behalf of his government for the “profound and generational mistake” visited on mothers and their children who arrived in institutions.
“He shouldn’t have been there,” he told the Irish parliament. “The state will fail you, mothers and children in these homes.”
Martin said it was deeply worrying that authorities at the time knew about the very high mortality rate in homes, but did not appear to have intervened. The report said that 15% of all children in homes died of diseases and infections such as stomach flu, almost doubling the infant mortality rate nationwide.
Martin added: “We need to learn the lesson that institutionalization creates power structures and abuses of power and should never be an option for our country under any circumstances.”
Church-run homes in Ireland housed orphans, unmarried pregnant women, and their babies for most of the 20th century. The mothers were abandoned by their families and hidden by shame, and many of the children were separated from their mothers for adoption.
Institutions came under heavy scrutiny after historian Catherine Corless in 2014 found death certificates for nearly 800 children who died in a home for mothers and babies in the west of Ireland – but could only find a burial file for a child.
Investigators later found a mass grave containing the remains of babies and young children in an underground sewer structure on the land of the house, which was run by an order of Catholic nuns and closed in 1961.
The commission of inquiry said about 56,000 unmarried mothers and about 57,000 children had lived in the homes it investigated. Most were admitted in the 1960s and early 1970s.