Former minister for children Katherine Zappone has called for a pause on a controversial planned development at the site of a former mother and baby home.
Earlier this year Estuary View Enterprises was granted planning permission by Cork City Council to build 140 apartments on the grounds of Bessborough in Blackrock on the southside of Cork city.
Bessborough Mother and Baby Home Support Group and Cllr Peter Horgan of Labour lodged appeals to An Coimisiún Pleanála. On July 9th the commission upheld permission for the building of 108 apartments on the site. This caused dismay among survivors of the home who are vehemently opposed to the development.
The Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes estimated that 923 babies died at the home between the 1920s and 1990s. The burial place of more than 859 children remains unknown.
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In an interview with RTÉ’s This Week programme Zappone said significant efforts should be made to determine the scale of burial at Bessborough.
“I think this can and should be done now before development. I think there should be a pause now in relation to the development.
“The careful, honest and moral thing to do is to look properly before we build.
“Why would the State not want to do something about this?
“We know 859 [children] and 19 mothers died at Bessborough and they have no known grave.”
The former minister believes a geophysical survey ought to be carried out at Bessborough.
“We need to have a similar approach to Bessborough as we did in Tuam, it needs to be taken one step at a time and to determine how to do that.
“The primary concerns, as I hear it, and as our special advocate Patricia Carey talks about, they [the victims and survivors] have the right to know where their loved ones are buried and that’s what I am arguing for.”
Zappone said what was done in Tuam “wasn’t done in Bessborough”.
She indicated that when she was minister for children she received the burial reports from the commission of investigation.
“In that report they identified that there were modest efforts to ascertain the location and the scale of the burial at Bessborough.
“Forensic archaeologists basically assessed the visible landscape but determined that there were no visible features that indicated that there was something or that human remains may be buried underneath.”
Zappone insisted this wasn’t “sufficient” nor was it comparable to what occurred at Tuam.
Meanwhile, in a letter of appeal to the commission earlier this year Zappone expressed her belief in the “human dignity” of the mothers and children associated with Bessborough whose burial places are not known.
However, in its decision to uphold planning permission the commission stated there was no evidence of unrecorded burials in the area where the development is proposed.
Conditions attached to the planning permission include forensic archaeological monitoring during construction work and the appointment of a liaison officer to engage with survivor groups.
