After many years of research, it became known that Between 1922 and 1998, 9,000 children died in 18 institutions across the country., many of whom are infants, born to unmarried mothers.
The mortality rate reached approximately 15% and was much higher than the corresponding rate for the country as a whole, which means that many of the children were left to fend for themselves without proper care.
The issue has taken on major proportions and has even caused political turmoil. The report refers to “a dark and shameful chapter in the country's history” and called on the church, which was responsible for the institutions, to also apologize.
Managed by nuns and the Irish state, these institutions, which operated until 1998, accepted young girls and young women who had been rejected by their families. Considered illegitimate, the children born there were often separated from their mothers and then given up for adoption, severing all ties with their biological families.
«The report also makes it clear that for decades, Ireland had a stifling, oppressive, and brutal culture of misogyny, where widespread stigmatization of unmarried mothers and their children robbed these people of their free will and sometimes their future.», said Roderick O'Gorman, the minister responsible for children's issues.
Prime Minister apologizes for the state's failure to protect children in Catholic Church institutions
Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin today formally apologized for the state's «profound failure» in its treatment of unwed mothers and their babies in a network of institutions run by the Catholic Church since the 1920s. 1920 to the 1990s.
A report commissioned by the government and released yesterday, Tuesday, revealed a «shocking» mortality rate of approximately 15% among children born in the institutions, reflecting the inhumane living conditions. A total of approximately 9,000 children died.
«On behalf of the government, the state, and its citizens, I apologize for the profound generational injustice done to Irish mothers and their children who ended up in a Mother and Baby Home or a County Home.», Martin told Parliament.
«I apologize for the shame and stigma they suffered, which for some remains a burden to this day,» Martin said. «The state let you down.»
The report describes in detail how many infants were taken away from their mothers and sent abroad for adoption, while a number of children were vaccinated without their mothers' consent.
Anonymous testimonies from tenants likened the institutions to with prisons where they were verbally abused by nuns, while women underwent traumatic childbirth without pain relief.
Relatives say that babies were not treated well because they were born to unmarried mothers who, like their children, were considered a stain on Ireland's image as a devout Catholic nation. According to the report, among the women admitted to the institutions were even girls as young as 12.
An alliance of survivor organizations said yesterday that the report is «truly shocking,» but has mixed feelings because it does not fully account for the role the state played in managing the institutions and separating mothers from their children.
The head of the Irish Catholic Church apologized «unreservedly» for its role.
The religious order that ran a home for unwed mothers in the city Tuam, where nearly 800 children died, said today that the battalion «did not live up to our Christian values when managing the foundation».
