A developer has been granted planning permission for more than 100 apartments at the site of the former Bessborough mother and baby home in Cork.
Earlier this year, developer Estuary View Enterprises was granted planning permission by Cork City Council to build 140 apartments at the site.
However, the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home Support Group and Cllr Peter Horgan of the Labour Party lodged appeals with An Coimisiún Pleanála.
On Thursday the commission upheld permission for 106 apartments. One apartment block has been removed from the plans after the appeals body said it would adversely affect the historic landscape and the setting of Bessborough House, which is a protected structure.
READ MORE
Bessborough campaigners have been vehemently opposed to the development on what they describe as “a site of conscience”.
Spokesperson for the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home Support Group Carmel Cantwell said she is shocked at the decision to build where her mother “last cradled her baby”.
Her brother, William Walsh, was six weeks old when he died of renal abscess septicaemia in 1960. Cantwell says the nuns at the home failed to get him appropriate medical help.
“It took them nearly three weeks to send him to hospital. He became sick on his third day of life.”
Cantwell says she and her 83-year-old-mother regularly walk around the Bessborough grounds.
“I know some horrific things happened there and it was the most horrendous part of my mother’s life. But she feels at peace there because it is the last place she held her baby.”
The Irish Council of Civil Liberties also expressed concern about the development. It said the grounds have not been fully exhumed and the location of children who died there is unknown.
More than 900 children died at Bessborough or in hospital after being transferred there from the institution, which operated from 1922 to 1998.
Despite “very extensive inquiries and searches”, the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes was only able to establish the burial place of 64 children, meaning the burial places of more than 800 children remain unknown. The inquiry concluded it was likely that some of them were buried in unmarked graves.
An Coimisúin Pleanála said there was no evidence of unrecorded burials in the area where the development is proposed. Conditions attached to the permission include forensic archaeological monitoring during construction works and the appointment of a liaison officer to engage with survivor groups.
“Should human remains be discovered, full forensic controls would be applied. This includes stopping works, securing the area and notifying the Cork City Coroner immediately,” the decision noted.
The Labour Party said a compulsory purchase order (CPO) of the Bessborough site should remain an option for the Government. Party leader Ivana Bacik said the decision to grant planning permission on such a sensitive site is a hammer blow to all survivors and campaigners.
“There is still time for Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil to right this wrong. The CPO of the site remains possible and we are urging Government to act without delay to ensure that the Bessborough site is recognised and preserved as a site of conscience,” she said.
Patricia Carey, special advocate for survivors of institutional abuse, said she was “shocked at the abhorrent decision”.
Carey, who was born in Bessborough mother and baby institution, said she supported calls for the Government to acquire the site.
In the Dáil on Thursday, Sinn Féin housing spokesman Eoin Ó Broin called on the Government to give survivors and their families “a clear commitment” it will “buy the site, facilitate proper investigation of the land, and preserve Bessborough as a site of national conscience”.
Replying, Minister for Enterprise Peter Burke said decisions around planning “are independent processes and they had to run their course”.
He said: “I can’t respond with exact precision on what the State will do in terms of a CPO to provide a monument for the future.”
However, he stressed “those who have been affected by that trauma, those families who still carry this grief to this very day, need to be front and centre in the determination of the future of that site”.
