Alison O'Reilly: It took a global spotlight for many to accept hundreds of babies are buried in a septic tank in Tuam

Irish Examiner

10 hours ago

As I sat in gridlock traffic in my hometown of Drogheda recently, I saw hundreds of well-dressed families of all ages, carrying beautiful bouquets and plants pots, as they all walked in the same direction.
I eventually made it past three Garda checkpoints directing traffic away from the congested areas until I realised where everyone was going — it was the annual blessings of the graves.
The scene could be mistaken for an All-Ireland final, or a concert, except people were in their Sunday best.
It marked a stark contrast to the treatment of the hundreds of innocent little children buried in and around a septic tank system in a former mother and baby home in Tuam, Co Galway, run by the Bon Secours order of nuns.
While not all the well-turned-out people at the blessings of the graves will be committed and practicing Catholics, the popularity of the yearly event shows the truth of how Irish people have a great tradition of mourning the dead.
When I wrote a story that was published on the front of a national newspaper 11 years ago, I thought there would be a visceral outcry.
But really it was greeted with a shrug of apathy, and there was no response at all from the government.
That was until one week after publication when the Mail Online picked it up, leading to global explosure, and within the hour it quite rightly turned into one of the biggest stories to come out of Ireland in the past decade.
The story forced the government to respond.
It opened the floodgates for survivors of these awful institutions to speak out and so began our long fight to have the children's remains removed from around the septic tank system they were dumped in, after they died while in the care of the Bon Secours nuns.
I first heard of the mass grave in Tuam when I was contacted by Anna Corrigan in Dublin in early 2014.
She had read an article I had written the previous week on the unveiling of a headstone for the 222 children who died in the Bethany Homes in Dublin.
Anna Corrigan with journalist Alison O'Reilly, who originally broke the story. Picture: Chani Anderson
The moving event, organised by Professor Niall Meehan and the late Bethany home campaigner Derek Lister, took place in St Jerome's cemetery.
My article was published the following Sunday.
Anna contacted me the next day. I was sitting with my two children in my living room when I saw her email.
'I want to talk to you about my two brothers who are buried in a mass grave in Tuam,' she said. 'There are 800 babies there'.
I read and re-read the email, and I'll admit, I found it all too hard to believe. My sister had lived in Tuam for 13 years. I knew the town well.
Neither of us had ever heard of a plot containing hundreds of tiny remains from children who died while in the mother and baby home.
The email, while well written and containing her home address, just didn't seen credible.
But I was immediately interested and, I remember thinking 'I'm calling to her house first thing tomorrow'.
Unlike some great historical discoveries, which come about because of huge amounts of money invested in the work of teams of researchers and historians, this discovery was driven solely by one homemaker working as a historian in her spare time from her home in Co Galway.
Between keeping her home and looking after her family, Catherine Corless has managed to bring dignity to a group of forgotten children of Tuam.
While in Dublin, at her kitchen table, Anna was learning about her mother's two secret sons.
That Monday evening in 2014, at my home in Dublin, Anna reached out with the heartbreaking truth of her life about her mother Bridget Dolan, who never told her about her brothers.
Her email said: 'I would like to let you know that there is a similar issue ongoing with a graveyard connected to the mother and baby home at Tuam, Co Galway.
'There is a small plot containing almost 800 children which has been left unmarked and neglected by the Bon Secours nuns who ran the mother and baby home. The plot where the children were buried was previously a sewerage tank.'
Between them, the women had a mountain of work that was carefully compiled, noted, in plastic folders with headings, highlighted, and in boxes marking out what each one contained.
When I went to Anna's house a few days later she gave me contact details for Catherine, whom I rang immediately. I was instantly impressed with her rational, calm evidence and diligence. Her work was such a vital matter of public interest.
Like all journalists who are presented with a powerful story like this, you are trained to instantly ask yourself "where at the holes in this story?" and "how do we stand it up?"
Historian Catherine Corless, whose years of meticulous research uncovered the burial of up to 800 children on the grounds of the former Tuam Mother and Baby Home. Picture: Chani Anderson
While Catherine gave me a detailed overall picture of the home and the children's names, Anna gave me individual examples of how her own brothers, whom she had only learned about in 2013, disappeared from the care of the nuns.
I went into the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registry, which is not covered by Data Protection, and checked John and William Dolan's certificates.
Just as Anna said, there was a birth cert for both boys, in 1946 and 1950, but only one death cert — for John in 1947.
She had made a Freedom of Information request to Tusla, and it provided her with details of how William was marked dead in the nuns' ledgers, but had no official death cert.
Was he the only child whose records stated this?
I spent day and night for the next few weeks, checking everything Catherine and Anna had said.
With the help of Anna, Catherine, and Professor Thomas Garavan (whose mother and her six siblings had been in the home), we published the '800 babies in a mass grave' story on May 25, 2014.
But to our bitter disappointment, this huge revelation, that 11 years later would lead to Ireland's first ever mass grave exhumation, only received a small follow up on RTÉ's Nuacht.
I was baffled. Apart from the media, what about our 160-plus TDs? There was no outrage, no reaction, and no one spoke up.
However, hundreds of people did take to Twitter (now X) and Facebook and began a discussion under the hashtags #800babies and #tuambabies.
In the week that followed, apart from a detailed section on RTÉ's Liveline with Philip Boucher Hayes and Newstalk with Jonathan Healy, there was no reaction here at all.
Did people just simply not want to know?
Catherine, who at the time had little experience with the media, was a natural when she spoke out, a person you felt you could trust.
All I, Catherine, Anna, and Thomas wanted was justice for the children who died and for the children to be given a dignified burial.
But the dam didn't burst until the following week on June 2, 2014. Little did we know what was about to happen.
The MailOnline, the global news website, contacted me and asked me for the story I had written on the 'mass grave of children in the west of Ireland'.
The story was up online by 11am. Catherine rang me within the hour to say that she was being interviewed by dozens of national stations.
'Alison,' she gasped down the phone. ' The Washington Post has just been on. They're following up your story and wanted to talk to me.'
And it didn't end there. A frenzy exploded on social media, the #tuambabies hashtag began to trend, and every global media organisation ran the story, including Sky News, CNN, NPR, Al Jazeera, and CBS.
The government was then forced to respond. Then Taoiseach Enda Kenny, who was in the US at the time, was being doorstepped by the American media about the Tuam Babies.
He responded by saying the Government was going to discuss it and that an inquiry was under consideration.
But the story of the Tuam Babies sat quietly here for the first week until the international media took hold of it.
I often wondered why that happened. Could people simply not believe that hundreds of babies had been dumped into a sewage tank, or that the thoughts of it were just too big?
I still struggle to understand the precise reason for such a state of denial — but denial it undoubtedly was.
Nonetheless, for the next six weeks, the floodgates opened, and every national and international newspaper and airwaves were full of gut-wrenching stories from the survivors of these hell holes that were dotted all over the country and not just in Tuam.
Their silence was broken, and they were given a voice.
The dead were also no longer going to stay quiet. Family members, campaigners, survivors, and good decent people began to speak out at their utter horror of what the State and church did to all of these innocent women and children.
The intergenerational trauma is not referenced enough and for those who believe you can "just get over it and move on", there is no such thing.
Trauma does not discriminate.
Then came the inevitable backlash, the kind of thing that happens when people in power are challenged.
One American reporter told me that he "couldn't see how this was true". Then queries were raised about the septic tank and how that volume of children could actually fit into it.
The story was even branded by some as a 'hoax', despite the fact that none of the critics could explain where the missing children had been buried.
Nobody could provide a rational explanation for where these 796 children had gone.
Instead, some tried to pick holes in it.
People said it wasn't a septic tank; it was another type of tank.
Someone rang me and said: "I hope, for your sake, the children are in the grave, or your career is over."
But all I ever wanted to know (and still do) is, if the children are not on the site subject to excavation next week, then where are they?
For 11 years I have written about about the Tuam babies and supported Catherine in her quest for truth as well as those with families — Anna, Thomas, Annette McKay, Peter Mulryan, and the only surviving mother of the Tuam home, Chrissie Tully — in the hope we could get the grave open.
A commission of investigation into mother and baby homes was established by then-minister James Reilly in early 2015.
Anna Corrigan, walking away from the Tuam site, where her two infant brothers are believed to be buried, shortly before it was closed off for excavation. Picture: Chani Anderson
It examined 14 mother and baby homes around the country, plus a further four so-called county homes, and the final report was due in February 2018 but did not arrive until January 2021.
In the end, it was a huge disappointment but an interesting historical record.
It did not, nor was its job, to hold anyone to account.
In the end, the minister for children explained that 'all of society was to blame'.
They were some of the first words from a government that did not take full responsibility for its predecessors, the regulators of these institutions.
A State apology was given.
I'm sure some survivors appreciated it, but a large part of society was disgusted by it.
The Bon Secours order and Galway County Council also apologised to survivors and families.
When the confirmation of the Tuam grave finally came from Katherine Zappone in 2017, we were vindicated.
But the exhumation still did not happen.
Instead, we had to fight on to see this happen.
Two years ago, Cork man Daniel MacSweeney was appointed to oversee the intervention of the Tuam site — I was still sceptical, even though he was in situ, building his team and being open with the media.
For years I said 'I'll believe it when I see it', and last Monday, I did see it.
As the country's first ever mass exhumation prepares to take place on July 14, 2025, the Tuam babies' story has shown how ordinary people can do extraordinary things.
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Watch: Anna Corrigan and Catherine Corless speak at Tuam site