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 feminists@law  Vol 14, no 1 (2025) 
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Mother and Baby Homes 
Commission of Investigation 
Report 
      
 
Alternative Executive Summary 
 
 
 
 

 



Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation Report: Alternative Executive Summary 
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Foreword to the Revised Text: June 2025. ........................................................................................................ 3 

Foreword to the Draft Alternative Executive Summary: July 14th 2021 ...................................................... 8 

Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................................................. 11 

1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................................... 13 

1.1 Human Rights: Summary of Findings .................................................................................................. 15 

2. Single Motherhood in Context ..................................................................................................................... 20 

2.1 Concealment ............................................................................................................................................. 20 

2.2 Impacts of the Law on Illegitimacy ....................................................................................................... 22 

2.3 Natural Fathers ........................................................................................................................................ 23 

2.4 Profit and Responsibility ........................................................................................................................ 25 

3. In the Institutions. .......................................................................................................................................... 27 

3.1. Governance and Responsibility ............................................................................................................ 27 

3.2 Social Welfare ........................................................................................................................................... 31 

3.3 Unpaid Labour ......................................................................................................................................... 34 

3.4 Admissions and Detention ..................................................................................................................... 37 

3.5 Admissions and Sexual Abuse .............................................................................................................. 43 

3.6 Inhuman and Degrading Treatment ..................................................................................................... 44 

3.7 Deaths and Burials .................................................................................................................................. 47 

3.8 Obstetric Violence ................................................................................................................................... 51 

3.9 Vaccine and Milk Trials .......................................................................................................................... 53 

4. Family Separation .......................................................................................................................................... 56 

4.1 Harms of Family Separation .................................................................................................................. 57 

4.2 Domestic Adoption ................................................................................................................................. 60 

4.3 Intercountry Adoption ............................................................................................................................ 65 

5. Discrimination ................................................................................................................................................ 68 

5.1 Race ........................................................................................................................................................... 68 

5.2 Disability ................................................................................................................................................... 71 

5.3 Travellers .................................................................................................................................................. 73 

5.4 Religion ..................................................................................................................................................... 74 

6. Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................................... 77 

7. Clann Recommendations for Action ........................................................................................................... 82 

8.Notes on Methodology .................................................................................................................................. 84 

8.1 Process and Motivation .......................................................................................................................... 84 

8.2 What are the Limitations of this Document? ....................................................................................... 84 

8.3 Language .................................................................................................................................................. 87 

8.4 Voice .......................................................................................................................................................... 88 



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8.5 Testimony before the Confidential Committee: Law and Oral Testimony ..................................... 91 

8.6 Our Approach to Oral Evidence ............................................................................................................ 95 

8.7 A Feminist Rights-based Analysis ........................................................................................................ 98 

8.7 Law in Context ....................................................................................................................................... 100 

8.8 Law and Time ........................................................................................................................................ 100 

Further Resources ............................................................................................................................................ 102 

 
  



Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation Report: Alternative Executive Summary 
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FOREWORD TO THE REVISED TEXT: JUNE 2025. 
 

This document builds on the methodology developed by feminist judgments projects to 
rewrite the Executive Summary to the Final Report of Ireland’s Mother and Baby Homes 
Commission of Investigation, published in January 2021.1 The Mother and Baby Homes 
Commission of Investigation was established in February 2015 to investigate experiences in 
certain of Ireland’s residential institutions for single mothers and their young children 
between 1922 and 1998. In our rewritten Executive summary, twenty-five academics 
examined the evidence in the Commission’s original report, and offered a feminist, human 
rights-based analysis of the evidence presented there.2 Our document was first published 
open access on the Technological University Dublin website as the Mother and Baby Homes 
Commission of Investigation Draft Alternative Executive Summary in July 2021.3  

We did not make new findings of fact or depart from the law in force in the relevant time 
periods. However, we came to very different general conclusions about the nature, extent 
and gravity of human rights abuses in these institutions. By contrast with the original report, 
we found evidence of harms including forced labour, inhuman and degrading treatment, 
involuntary detention, non-consensual medical treatment, forced family separation and 
discrimination on the basis of gender, race, religion, class and disability. We also found that 
the original report underplayed State responsibility for most abuses, even though the state 
funded and regulated the institutions and tolerated widely-known risks to women and 
children.4 

Government is not bound by the findings of commissions of investigation. However, this 
Commission’s Final Report undoubtedly informed and legitimated a suite of subsequent 
government redress efforts. In brief, these have included:  

• A formal state apology in January 2021.5 The apology only addressed those who 
spent time in institutions within the scope of the Commission’s inquiry. There was 
no general apology to those affected by forcible or illegal adoption. In a September 
2021 report, the Irish Special Rapporteur on Child Protection recommended the 

 
1 Final Report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes January 12, 2021 
https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/d4b3d-final-report-of-the-commission-of-investigation-into-
mother-and-baby-homes/  
2 We were not the only academics to critique the Report at the time. See also “Historians Seek New 
Survivor-Centred Mother and Baby Homes Commission” Irish Examiner June 3 2021 
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40305698.html and Laurence Cox, (2021) ‘Researchers 
and survivors respond to the report of the Commission of Inquiry into Mother and Baby Homes” 
https://mural.maynoothuniversity.ie/id/eprint/15024/  
3 Available at https://www.tudublin.ie/media/website/news/2021/main-news/Draft-September-
24.pdf  
4 In his June 2021 report, published in January 2022, the Special Rapporteur on Child Protection offers 
a similar rights-based analysis of the Commission Report; Conor O’Mahony, Annual Report of the 
Special Rapporteur on Child Protection (2021) https://assets.gov.ie/static/documents/special-
rapporteur-on-child-protection-14th-report.pdf  
5 Apology by An Taoiseach Micheál Martin, Dáil Éireann, January 12, 2021, 
https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/2021-01-13/10/  

https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/d4b3d-final-report-of-the-commission-of-investigation-into-mother-and-baby-homes/
https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/d4b3d-final-report-of-the-commission-of-investigation-into-mother-and-baby-homes/
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40305698.html
https://mural.maynoothuniversity.ie/id/eprint/15024/
https://www.tudublin.ie/media/website/news/2021/main-news/Draft-September-24.pdf
https://www.tudublin.ie/media/website/news/2021/main-news/Draft-September-24.pdf
https://assets.gov.ie/static/documents/special-rapporteur-on-child-protection-14th-report.pdf
https://assets.gov.ie/static/documents/special-rapporteur-on-child-protection-14th-report.pdf
https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/2021-01-13/10/


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establishment of an inquiry into illegal adoption practices, including falsification of 
records.6 Successive governments have ignored this recommendation. 

• Proposals for memorialisation, including grants to support commemorative events 
and a new National Centre for Research and Remembrance.7 

• A payment scheme, opened in 2024, offering limited financial redress to women and 
their children who spent time in relevant institutions.8 Survivors' and affected 
people's requests for a rights-centred redress scheme were largely ignored.9 Payment 
is based on length of stay in one of those institutions. Some women will also be 
eligible for a payment recognising unpaid work. No effort is made to redress other 
abuses. Although the Commission estimated that there were 58,000 living survivors 
and affected people of relevant institutions, the government estimates that some 
34,000 people are eligible for a redress payment. The scheme excludes people who 
were boarded out as children, and people who spent less than six months in a 
relevant institution as babies. It also excludes people who received payments under 
Ireland’s previous redress schemes for those who spent time in industrial schools 
and reformatories. People who accept a payment under the scheme must sign a 
waiver, so that they cannot take a case against the state in future. Several affected 
people have since begun litigation to challenge their exclusion from the payment 
scheme. In March 2025, it was reported that only 7% of the budgeted figure for the 
payment scheme had been spent in the first year of the scheme’s operation. Of eight 
religious orders associated with mother and baby institutions, only three have 
offered to contribute to funding the redress scheme.10  

• Limited improvements to procedures enabling access to birth certificates, birth and 
early life information for people who were adopted, boarded out, or subjected to an 
illegal birth registration.11 Most mothers and most relatives are excluded from 
accessing information under this scheme. There are still significant barriers to 
accessing records related to institutional abuse in Ireland.12  

 
6 Conor O’Mahony, Proposal for a State Response to Illegal Birth Registrations in Ireland (2021) 
https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-children-disability-and-equality/publications/proposals-
for-a-state-response-to-illegal-birth-registrations-in-ireland/  
7 National Centre for Research and Remembrance https://www.gov.ie/en/campaigns/0319a-
national-centre-for-research-and-remembrance/  
8 Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme https://www.gov.ie/en/campaigns/2938d-the-
mother-and-baby-institutions-payment-scheme/  
9 These were gathered by OAK consultancy in a government-funded process; Mary Lou O’Kennedy, 
Report of the findings of the Consultation with Survivors of Mother and Baby Homes and County Homes (May 
2021). Available at https://assets.gov.ie/static/documents/69850063-oak-report-of-the-findings-of-
the-consultation-with-survivors-of-mother-and-b.pdf  
10 Sheila Nunan, Report on Negotiations with Religious Orders (April, 2025) 
https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-children-disability-and-equality/press-
releases/publication-of-report-on-negotiations-with-religious-organisations-associated-with-mother-
and-baby-institutions-payment-scheme/  
11 Birth Information and Tracing Act, 2022. New powers and duties to enable preservation of relevant 
records in private hands were introduced by the Maternity Protection, Employment Equality and 
Preservation of Certain Records Act 2024. 
12 See further Archives, Access and Human Rights Symposium (Royal Irish Academy, 2025) 
https://www.ria.ie/assets/uploads/2024/05/Archives-Access-Human-Rights-Report-1.pdf  

https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-children-disability-and-equality/publications/proposals-for-a-state-response-to-illegal-birth-registrations-in-ireland/
https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-children-disability-and-equality/publications/proposals-for-a-state-response-to-illegal-birth-registrations-in-ireland/
https://www.gov.ie/en/campaigns/0319a-national-centre-for-research-and-remembrance/
https://www.gov.ie/en/campaigns/0319a-national-centre-for-research-and-remembrance/
https://www.gov.ie/en/campaigns/2938d-the-mother-and-baby-institutions-payment-scheme/
https://www.gov.ie/en/campaigns/2938d-the-mother-and-baby-institutions-payment-scheme/
https://assets.gov.ie/static/documents/69850063-oak-report-of-the-findings-of-the-consultation-with-survivors-of-mother-and-b.pdf
https://assets.gov.ie/static/documents/69850063-oak-report-of-the-findings-of-the-consultation-with-survivors-of-mother-and-b.pdf
https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-children-disability-and-equality/press-releases/publication-of-report-on-negotiations-with-religious-organisations-associated-with-mother-and-baby-institutions-payment-scheme/
https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-children-disability-and-equality/press-releases/publication-of-report-on-negotiations-with-religious-organisations-associated-with-mother-and-baby-institutions-payment-scheme/
https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-children-disability-and-equality/press-releases/publication-of-report-on-negotiations-with-religious-organisations-associated-with-mother-and-baby-institutions-payment-scheme/
https://www.ria.ie/assets/uploads/2024/05/Archives-Access-Human-Rights-Report-1.pdf


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• New legislation enabling excavation of some institutional burial sites, exhumation 
and potential identification of remains.13 This Act established the Office of the 
Director of Authorised Intervention at Tuam, which is responsible for excavation and 
recovery and identification of human remains at the site of the former Bons Secours 
institution in that town. 14 It is not clear whether sites other than Tuam will be the 
subjects of similar interventions.  

A detailed critique of these interventions is beyond the scope of our work here.15 Our Draft 
Alternative Executive Summary was published before these interventions were developed in 
any detail. However, we argue that they are problematic to the extent that they are based on 
a Report which minimised or misrecognised a range of mass breaches of human rights. Our 
Alternative Executive Summary aims to address these flaws.  

We originally published this Alternative Executive Summary in July 2021 while it was still in 
draft and launched it at an online event on July 14, 2021. Our intention in doing this was to 
allow space and time for requests for amendments and additions. Following publication of 
the draft, several individuals, including survivors and affected people of relevant abuses, 
activist groups, historians and other academics offered feedback on the text. Some wrote to 
us directly. Others completed an online survey which we had made publicly available for 
this purpose. We collated their responses and made revisions, and this revised text reflects 
their feedback. We wish to thank all of those who came to the launch or engaged with the 
text and who took the time to respond to us. In particular, we thank Ed Barrett, who sent 
observations from his detailed reading of the Commission’s report.  

We sent the revised text to each of the original co-authors, and to the expert readers and 
academic reviewers who reviewed the original draft (listed in the Acknowledgments section 
below). This included updates to some phraseology, for instance, changing survivors to 
'survivors and affected people'.16 One co-author, Dr Vicky Conway, sadly passed away in 
July 2022. We have taken care to return to her contributions.  

 
13 Institutional Burials Act, 2022. 
14 Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention, Tuam https://odait.ie/who-we-are/  
15 For subsequent academic critique of the report and surrounding issues see Katherine O’Donnell, 
James Smith and Maeve O’Rourke (eds) Redress (UCD Press, 2022); James Gallen, "The Challenges in 
Addressing Non-Recent Abuses in Ireland: Critical Engagements with Transitional Justice." (2023): 
500-510; Katherine O’Donnell, "Commission to Inquire into Ireland's Mother and Baby Homes: An 
Epistemology of Ignorance." Epistemic Injustice and the Philosophy of Recognition. Routledge, 2022. 219-
255; Lindsey Earner-Byrne, "The Irish family: Blame, agency and the ‘unmarried mother problem’, 
1980s–2021." Contemporary European History 32.2 (2023): 270-286; Barry Houlihan and Eliscia Kinder. 
"States of Apology: The Politics of Memory, Access, and Irish Archives Legislation." Documentation 
from Truth and Reconciliation Commissions. Routledge, 2025. 133-148. We also encourage readers to seek 
out Caitlin O’Neill’s unpublished MA thesis, Unmarried Mothers in Twentieth Century Ireland: A Case 
Study of Sean Ross Abbey, 1931-1969 (Maynooth University, 2021). For critical engagement from UN 
experts see e.g.  ‘Ireland: UN experts call for adequate redress for systemic racism and racial 
discrimination in childcare institutions’ (2022) https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements-and-
speeches/2022/09/ireland-un-experts-call-adequate-redress-systemic-racism-and-racial  
16 For a detailed explanation see Claire McGettrick and Maeve O’Rourke, Submission to United Nations 
Special Procedures Mandate-Holders: Irish State Responses to Gross and Systematic Forced Family Separation 
 

https://odait.ie/who-we-are/
https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements-and-speeches/2022/09/ireland-un-experts-call-adequate-redress-systemic-racism-and-racial
https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements-and-speeches/2022/09/ireland-un-experts-call-adequate-redress-systemic-racism-and-racial


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Although we made all requested amendments, the text remains largely as published in draft 
in July 2021. We have not updated it to include new factual information that has entered the 
public domain since the draft was published because the rewritten Executive Summary is 
based on the information and evidence that was published by the original Commission of 
Investigation. 
 
As discussed further in Section 8, the Commission’s evidence-gathering methods have been 
robustly criticised, including by many of the survivors and affected people and adopted 
people who gave evidence to the Commission. In June 2021, the then Children’s Minister 
suggested that an international human rights expert would review the Commission’s 
findings. The review was never commissioned.17 In December 2021, in the course of judicial 
review proceedings, the government accepted that the Commission of Investigation had 
denied eight survivors and affected people18 who gave testimony to the Commission and 
who were identifiable in the Final Report, the opportunity to comment on and correct a pre-
publication draft, in violation of its obligations under s. 34(1) of the Commissions of 
Investigation Act 2004.19 A statement enumerating contested sections of the Report was 
published on the Government’s website. The contested sections of the Report have not been 
amended or withdrawn. The government has consistently refused to repudiate the Report. 
 
Given the demonstrated flaws in the body of evidence gathered by the Commission, some of 
those who wrote to us in response to the Draft Alternative Executive Summary encouraged us 
to gather survivor testimony for ourselves. Some offered to send us transcripts of the 
evidence which they had provided to the Commission, so that we could analyse it 
independently. Regrettably, we did not have the resources or capacity to pursue these 
invitations; particularly the work of contacting and engaging with a larger number who gave 
testimony to the Commission. This means that our Alternative Executive Summary does not 
correct the damage done to survivor testimony by the original Commission’s processes. 
However, even taking its deficiencies into account, the Commission’s Report provides ample 
evidence of key human rights violations in relevant institutions. 
 
We do not intend to present this document as final or absolute, but rather as a contribution 
to wider understanding of the ways in which the Irish state seeks to control the public 
narrative of the harms perpetuated by and in its institutions and associated systems of family 
separation and social control. We recognise that this document is not a substitute for 
meaningful state action. As one respondent to our survey said, simply, this work cannot give 
her back her child.  

 
Abuses (Clann Project, 25 April 2025) https://clannproject.org/wp-content/uploads/Clann-Project-
Submission-to-UN-Special-Procedures_25-04-25.pdf accessed 30 June 2025, footnote 5 
17 ‘Government Abandons Independent Review of Mother and Baby Home Testimony’ Examiner 
August 29 2022 https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40949582.html  
18 Including Philomena Lee, Mary Harney, Mari Steed, Siobhán Kilroy and Mary Isobelle Mullaney. 
19 Clann Project Press Release, December 17 2021 https://clannproject.org/wp-content/uploads/Clann-
Press-Release_17-12-21.pdf  

https://clannproject.org/wp-content/uploads/Clann-Project-Submission-to-UN-Special-Procedures_25-04-25.pdf%C2%A0accessed%2030%20June%202025
https://clannproject.org/wp-content/uploads/Clann-Project-Submission-to-UN-Special-Procedures_25-04-25.pdf%C2%A0accessed%2030%20June%202025
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40949582.html
https://clannproject.org/wp-content/uploads/Clann-Press-Release_17-12-21.pdf
https://clannproject.org/wp-content/uploads/Clann-Press-Release_17-12-21.pdf


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There is a tremendous amount of emotional labour involved in revisiting this text and we are 
deeply grateful to everyone who did so.  
 
Any errors and omissions remain our own.  
 
 
  



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FOREWORD TO THE DRAFT ALTERNATIVE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: JULY 14TH 2021 
 
This document is written in solidarity with all those, in Ireland, Northern Ireland and all over 
the world, who experienced human rights violations in ‘mother and baby homes’ and 
associated institutions, or whose rights were violated by the wider system of family 
separation of which those institutions were a part. Affected people include women who were 
separated from their children together with people who were adopted, fostered and ‘boarded 
out’, their parents, siblings and wider families. They also include women and children who 
died in the institutions, and those sent from one institution to another: perhaps a laundry, a 
psychiatric hospital or an industrial school. Many have campaigned for decades so that their 
experiences could receive a full public hearing. This project is inspired by their refusal to let 
the State control their personal narratives, and the public’s understanding of Ireland’s 
national history. 
 
We are academic specialists in human rights law, family law, criminal justice, equalities, 
social welfare law, legal history and histories of institutionalisation. This document is our 
‘rapid response’ to the 2021 Final Report of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of 
Investigation (‘the Report’). We have rewritten the Report’s Executive Summary. This 
document is intended to be read as an alternative Executive Summary to the Report. 
References in footnotes, unless otherwise stated are to that Report. Inline references in 
brackets –- e.g. (1.1) - are to numbered sections of this document.  
 
Our ‘rewrite’ is not comprehensive. It concentrates on aspects of the Executive Summary that 
are most appropriate to a legal analysis. Unlike the original Executive Summary, it is 
organised by legal topic and by type of rights violation. This means that this document may 
address issues in a different order to the original Report and connects issues from across 
several different chapters of the Report. In writing Sections 1-6, we have not taken account 
of any of the many developments since the Report’s publication in January 2021 and July 
2021, though we have reflected on some in Section 8. We have not gathered, and cannot, 
gather new evidence or new personal testimony. We are not best placed to undertake that 
very important work. 
 
We have rewritten the Executive Summary because it is the section of the Report that most 
people have read, and it is the section that outlines the Commission’s findings. We are 
concerned that the findings do not fully reflect the evidence presented in the main body of 
the Report and often minimise the State’s current obligations to those affected by mass 
‘historical’ abuses. Re-writing the Executive Summary also allowed us to balance responding 
relatively quickly with our ordinary academic workloads. Of course, as is evident from our 
footnotes; in re-writing the Executive Summary, we examined the Report thoroughly and as 
a whole.  
 
For a more detailed explanation of how this document was written and why, please see 
the ‘Notes on Methodology’ (Section 8). The original Report does not include a substantive 



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discussion of its methodology. Section 8 is part of the process of making our research 
accountable to our readers, and especially to those most affected by the issues we discuss.  
 
In Sections 1-6, when we refer to ‘The Commission’ we are writing as if the Commissioners 
and their co-authors had analysed the main body of their own Report differently. Our 
methodology draws on ‘feminist judgments projects’.20 In these projects, scholars rewrite 
important legal judgments as if they were judges, demonstrating that different outcomes or 
analyses – ones which are more attentive to women’s rights and to gendered experiences – 
were possible, even using the laws in force and evidence available to the original court at 
that time. In this way, a feminist judgments project shows that interpretation of facts and 
legal principle is central to legal decision-making and draws attention to the power dynamics 
that make some interpretations seem more plausible than others. We do something similar 
here. The Report is not a court judgment. However, its findings have legal impact; for 
example, in influencing future redress processes.  
 
Of course, this document does not replace the work done by the Commissioners or their 
research team. Instead, it is an academic exercise that shows that the Commission could have 
come to different conclusions using the same evidence, while remaining within the original 
Terms of Reference, and without conducting substantial new primary research. In some 
places, we borrow from the Commission’s own analysis. Although we cannot endorse the 
Commission’s approach, we can make the best of the evidence it gathered.  
 
Academic expertise is not more important than expertise by experience. There would not 
have been any Commission without the participation of those whose rights have been 
breached and they, in many ways, produced the evidence that we worked with via the 
Commission’s Report. We recognise that the Mother and Baby Homes Commission process, 
in common with other state investigations, was not designed in direct collaboration with 
affected people. The Terms of Reference, the design of the Collaborative Forum, the 
Investigative and Confidential Committees and the Report’s text excluded significant cohorts 
of affected people. Their unique knowledge of past abuse was not respected as it should have 
been. This document does not seek to be the ‘final word’ on past human rights abuses. Those 
most directly affected are entitled to contest state and academic narratives of past harm, 
including ours.  
 
In keeping with feminist academic practice, we have shared this draft while it is still a work 
in progress. We shared a draft with those attending an online public event hosted by TU 
Dublin Law Department on July 14th 2021 and we invited comments and feedback. We also 
welcomed comments and endorsements from academic researchers in relevant disciplines. 
 
Several people read and reviewed versions of this document in draft before it was made 
public. They are acknowledged below. We are very grateful for their time and efforts. We 
especially appreciate the contributions of three readers and reviewers who preferred not to 

 
20 See further Northern/Irish Feminist Judgments: Judges' Troubles and the Gendered Politics of Identity. 
Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2017. 



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be acknowledged by name. Two activist groups who were invited to review the document 
in draft shortly before the launch wrote to us to express disagreement with aspects of our 
findings, and we took their feedback into account in revising the document. One of these 
groups asked that a reference to a statement by one of their members be removed from 
Section 8.4. We did this immediately. 
 
This document relies extensively on the work of Claire McGettrick, born Lorraine Hughes, 
Maeve O’Rourke and all participants in the Clann Project. We endorse their 
recommendations for State action. Their consistent, diligent work for affected people is a 
model of solidarity and scholar-activism.  
 
Any errors and omissions are our own.  
 
 
 
 
  



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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
 
Editors 
 
Prof Máiréad Enright, Loughborough University – m.enright@lboro.ac.uk 
Prof Aoife O’Donoghue, Law School, Queen's University Belfast- aoife.odonoghue@qub.ac.uk 
 
Authors  
 
Dr Aoife Price, Postdoctoral Researcher, University College Cork. 
Clíona de Bhailís, University of Galway 
Maria Ní Fhlatharta, University of Galway 
Dr Sahar Ahmed, Assistant Lecturer in Law, Technological University Dublin 
Dr Aisling McMahon, Assistant Professor of Law, Maynooth University  
Prof Aoife Daly, School of Law, University College Cork 
Dr Ciara Fitzpatrick, Lecturer in Law, Ulster University  
Dr Deirdre McGowan, Senior Lecturer, Technological University Dublin 
Dr Fergus Ryan, Associate Professor in Law, Maynooth University 
Dr Fiona Donson, Senior Lecturer in Law, University College Cork 
Dr Helen Kehoe, Solicitor  
Dr James Gallen, Associate Professor of Law, Dublin City University  
Dr Kieran Walsh, Associate Professor in Law, Families & Society, University of Portsmouth. 
Dr Louise Kennefick, Senior Lecturer in Criminal Law, University of Glasgow 
Dr Lydia Bracken, Lecturer in Law, University of Limerick 
Dr Lynsey Black, Associate Professor of Criminology, Maynooth University. 
Prof Maebh Harding, Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin 
Prof Michelle Farrell, Liverpool University 
Dr Phil Mullen, Assistant Professor in Sociology, Trinity College Dublin  
Dr Samantha Morgan-Williams, Lecturer in Law, University College Cork 
Dr Vicky Conway, Associate Professor of Law, Dublin City University  
Prof Eilionóir Flynn, Centre for Disability Law and Policy, University of Galway 
Prof Shane Darcy, Irish Centre for Human Rights, University of Galway 
 
Expert Readers  
 
Anna Corrigan 
Anne Harris-Hennon 
Caitriona Palmer 
Carmel Cantwell 
Clodagh Finn 
Conall Ó Fátharta 
Conrad Bryan 
Fionna Fox, Solicitor 
Maria Joyce, National Traveller Women’s Forum 



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Mary Harney 
Rosemary Adaser 
Siobhán Kilroy 
Teresa O’Sullivan 
 
Academic Reviewers 
 
Dr Claire McGettrick, born Lorraine Hughes, Co-Director, Clann Project  
Dr Ciara Breathnach, Associate Professor in History, University of Limerick 
Dr David Keane, Associate Professor in Law, Dublin City University 
Dr Deirdre Duffy, Senior Lecturer in Sociology (Global Social Inequalities), Lancaster 
University 
Dr Deirdre Foley, Roy Foster Irish Government Research Fellow, Hereford College, Oxford 
Dr Erika Hanna, Senior Lecturer in Modern History, University of Bristol 
Dr Georgina Laragy, Glasnevin Trust Assistant Professor in Public History and Cultural 
Heritage, Trinity College Dublin  
Dr Ida Milne, Lecturer in European History, Carlow College 
Dr Jennifer Redmond, Assistant Professor in Irish History, NUI Maynooth 
Dr Katherine O’Donnell, Professor of the History of Ideas, School of Philosophy, University 
College Dublin 
Prof Laura Kelly, Professor of Modern Irish History, University of Strathclyde. 
Prof Laura McAtackney, Radical Humanities Laboratory and Archaeology, University 
College Cork 
Dr Leanne McCormick, Senior Lecturer in Modern Irish Social History, University of Ulster 
Dr Lorraine Grimes, Social Sciences Institution, National University of Ireland, Maynooth 
Dr Maeve O’Rourke, Senior Lecturer in Law, Irish Centre for Human Rights, University of 
Galway 
Dr Mark Coen, Associate Professor, University College Dublin 
Dr Niall Meehan, Head of Journalism & Media Faculty, Griffith College Dublin 
Prof Ruth Fletcher, Queen Mary, University of London 
Dr Sarah-Anne Buckley, Lecturer, School of History and Philosophy, University of Galway 
Dr Sophie Cooper, Senior Lecturer in Liberal Arts, Queen's University Belfast 
Prof Sean O’Connell, Professor of History, Queens University, Belfast 
Prof Yvonne McDermott Rees, School of Law, Swansea University 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  



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1. INTRODUCTION  
 
This Report addresses the institutionalisation of single mothers and their children in Ireland from 1922-
1998.21 It focuses on 18 institutions. These represent just a fraction of the ‘homes’ found in twentieth 
century Ireland. In turn, they were just one part of a wider system of family separation. As well as 
formal and informal adoption, transnational adoption, fostering and boarding out, this system included 
later institutionalisation in industrial schools, Magdalen laundries and other abusive residential 
institutions. 
 
Experiences varied from one institution to another. Throughout the period under examination, the 
institutions were consistently associated with serious human rights abuses. These abuses were known 
about and tolerated for decades. The institutions’ activities were considered ‘charitable’ or part of the 
‘welfare state’. This may have protected them, and the State itself, from significant criticism. However, 
it does not extinguish the human rights abuses women and children suffered as a result of their 
activities. 
 
From 1922 to 1998, women’s and girls’ reproductive choices and sexual autonomy were heavily 
constrained, including by Irish law. It is commonly observed that all Irish women were affected in some 
way by these restrictions but single women, girls and their children suffered distinct injustice and 
indignity which cannot be ignored. Disabled, Traveller, mixed-race, and poor women and children, as 
well as children whose parents were not from the same religious community experienced additional 
discrimination. 
 
In many instances, single mothers’ families inflicted and were complicit in abuse. The same can be said 
of some children’s natural fathers. Some actively participated in a wider culture of secrecy and shame 
around single parenthood. Others were simply unable to resist it, often, though not always, due to lack 
of means or knowledge. When natural fathers and mothers resisted unwanted adoption, they were often 
firmly rebuffed. Some families were repeatedly harmed by this system. Some who gave birth in the 
institutions had been children in institutions themselves, and some of their children grew up, in turn, 
to be institutionalised. 
 
However, this Commission is primarily concerned with State responsibility for past abuses. All 
institutions investigated by the Commission were regulated by the State and all received some State 
funding. The State did more than indirectly contribute to or condone these abuses. It actively and 
deliberately supported abusive institutions. When families and communities excluded women and girls, 
the State provided no meaningful refuge. While stigma and shame made it almost impossible for single 
women and girls to raise their children in the community, money and legal status – issues within the 
control of the state - mattered too. Poorer women and girls were more likely to be institutionalised for 
longer periods under harsher conditions, because they could not afford an alternative. 
 
Some aspects of institutional regimes improved with the passage of time. However, family separation 
through coerced, closed and secret adoption remained a feature of this institutional system late into the 
period under examination. 

 
21 It is important to note that one institution discussed in the Report; The Castle, only closed in 2006. 



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From the 1970s onwards, Ireland saw significant changes to the status of women driven by the activism 
of single mothers and their advocates. In particular, church and State authorities became aware that 
women and girls and their families were increasingly resistant to the idea of entering an institution to 
conceal an unplanned pregnancy. From 1967, more women travelled to England to access legal abortion 
there. Nevertheless, the State continued to deny adequate social and economic supports to single 
mothers. The impacts of that refusal are still felt in Irish society, and across the Irish diaspora. Many 
single parents and their children still live in poverty in Ireland today. The State continues to use 
institutions and private providers as sources of ‘care’ for vulnerable groups.  
 
This Report identifies several mass abuses. These constituted breaches of human and constitutional 
rights at the time they occurred, and/or trigger human rights obligations today.  
 
The precise grounds on which the State can be found liable for individual breaches of human and 
constitutional rights will vary by context. In general terms, the State can be considered responsible for 
a range of abuses for six distinct reasons, some or all of which apply in individual cases: 
 
1) The State funded all institutions discussed in this Report in some way.  
2) The State regulated - through local government, inspection, funding, criminal, human rights, 

constitutional and administrative law - all 18. Where religious authorities - Roman Catholic and 
Protestant - objected to more intensive regulation and reform, State agencies preferred to negotiate 
rather than enforce regulatory arrangements. In effect, the State delegated key social functions to 
private institutions. 

3) The State was aware of abusive practices in many institutions but did not make full use of its 
statutory powers, including powers of prosecution, and did not sanction institutions by depriving 
them of funding,22 It did not effectively investigate and punish key criminal offences and did not 
ensure effective investigations of deaths.  

4) Irish law punished family foundation outside of marriage and showed no concern for reproductive 
justice.  
a) The law criminalised aspects of access to contraception (until 1993) and almost all abortion (until 

2019), making it almost impossible to avoid unwanted pregnancy. For most of the period under 
examination it also tightly controlled access to information about contraception, fertility and 
abortion, and provided minimal sexual health education.  

b)  The State disadvantaged people born to single parents by preserving ‘illegitimacy’ as a legal 
status until 1987.  

c) Until 1953, the State largely left the regulation of adoption to Roman Catholic and Protestant 
institutions. After 1953, adoption law was heavily weighted against natural parents, and 
‘illegitimacy’ remained a key reason for adoptions.  

d) The State did not offer adequate financial support to single mothers to enable them to live 
independently. 

5) State agents actively directed single pregnant women and girls into the institutions, including by 
facilitating effective ‘repatriation’ from Britain. 

 
22 The point here is not those institutions always received adequate state funding, but that deprivation 
of funding was one means by which the state could exert control over institutions in cases where it 
knew of abuses. 



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6) Irish law still inhibits efforts to seek accountability for abuses in the institutions by restricting 
affected people’s access to records of institutionalisation and family; their own records and those of 
close family members.  

 

1.1 HUMAN RIGHTS: SUMMARY OF FINDINGS 

 
The Commission finds that the State bears substantial responsibility for breaches of 
constitutional and human rights including:  
 
The right to personal liberty  
The Commission accepts that during the whole period under examination, especially from 
1930 to 1960, many women and girls were involuntarily detained in institutions (3.4). 
‘Involuntary’ here means more than that they had no practical alternative to entering an 
institution. It means that they were actively detained against their will. Witness testimony 
demonstrates that some women and girls were deceived or coerced into entering an 
institution. In some cases, they reported being told by a Garda, social worker, authorities in 
charge of an institution, or a judge that they must remain in an institution. They often 
understood that it was unlawful to disobey that instruction. Those ‘repatriated’ from Britain 
were also often sent to institutions. The Commission is persuaded that, in practice, many 
women and girls, their families and friends, staff and State agents, understood that they were 
not free to leave the institution when they pleased. In key respects, detention in these 
institutions was indistinguishable from formal State incarceration. The Commission has seen 
records documenting petitions for release and discussing release dates. The law did not 
provide for formal review of this detention. 
 
The rights to privacy, bodily integrity and freedom from inhuman and degrading treatment 
The Commission heard and saw ample evidence of inhuman and degrading treatment in most 
institutions under examination (3.6). Especially in the earlier period under examination, and 
especially for working class women and girls, living conditions in the institutions were very 
poor. The Report documents physical, psychological and emotional abuse, obstetric violence 
(3.8), forced labour (3.3), denial of essential medical treatment, imposition of unwanted 
medical interventions, denial of adequate nutrition and physical punishment. Some witnesses 
to the Commission reported systemic physical abuse; for others it was occasional. Some 
abuses were deliberately intended to punish and deter single motherhood. The context of the 
abuse meant that some degrading effect was inescapable. Physical abuse took place within an 
inherently hierarchical and deeply exclusionary institutional regime. It was often 
accompanied by emotional and verbal abuse, which in turn was often sexualised or couched 
in the language of stigma and shame. Those on the receiving end were generally young 
women and girls, separated from their ordinary support structures, denied any real privacy, 
pregnant or recovering from birth. This combination of factors means that many mothers can 
be considered to have experienced inhuman and degrading treatment. Undoubtedly, in some 
cases, forcible removable of a child against their mother’s will may well be considered 



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degrading treatment, and that degradation will have been worsened by aspects of the 
institutional regime.  
 
The Commission emphasises that many women and girls sent to the institutions were 
pregnant through sexual assault, (3.5) including child sexual abuse by family members, 
employers or foster families. The State was aware of widespread child sex abuse, at least since 
the Carrigan Report (1931). The Commission has seen no evidence that women and girls 
pregnant through sexual violence received special care in the institutions, or that their cases 
were properly investigated. On the contrary, detention in an institution is likely to have 
compounded the original abuse. 
 
The Commission accepts that many women and girls were required to undertake exhausting 
domestic and caring labour in the institutions unpaid to contribute to the running costs of 
several institutions under examination (3.3). This was often a point of distinction between 
poorer women and girls and those from wealthier backgrounds, whose families might pay for 
early release. In many cases, denial of a wage was also an obstacle to raising one’s own child; 
without an income it was impossible to plan to provide for them. 
 
The right to life.  
Reported mortality rates in the institutions under investigation were well in excess of those 
across the general population until the 1970s and, in some cases, the 1980s (3.7). The 
Commission has seen evidence that that national and local government23 officials were aware 
of these death rates. Nevertheless, the State failed to adequately regulate the institutions and 
did not adequately investigate these deaths. Where required, legally mandated inquests often 
did not take place. It is highly probable that more lives were lost as a result. The Commission 
also has reasonable grounds to believe that some death records may have been falsified in the 
course of arranging illegal adoptions. Some burials clearly did not respect the deceased’s 
dignity.  
 
Vaccine and infant milk trials.  
The Commission heard evidence that children in the institutions were subject to vaccine and 
infant milk-trials, without their mothers’ or guardians’ consent and sometimes without their 
knowledge. It is impossible to comprehensively assess the trials due to gaps in the available 
records (3.9). The Commission finds that participating researchers did not comply with 
prevailing ethical standards. Participation in the trials was burdensome for children. The 
Commission cannot rule out that some children suffered adverse effects. 
 
The right to private and family life.  
The Commission has seen ample evidence of coerced and illegal adoption throughout the 
period under examination (Section 4). The Commission is aware of evidence of falsification 

 
23 In this document we use ‘local government’ as a generic umbrella term. The relevant authorities with 
responsibility for the institutions took different forms in different counties over the course of the period 
under examination (1.3). They included (in rough chronological order) boards of guardians, boards of 
health/public assistance, public assistance authorities, local authorities and health authorities.  



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of birth, adoption and death records potentially affecting several thousand people. Coercion 
was a common feature of the Irish adoption system. The law, to a great extent, tolerated this 
coercion. Although, from 1953 onwards, it recognised that adoption should not take place 
without the natural mother’s consent, in practice, mothers signed adoption papers while 
subject to a range of social, economic, religious and familial pressures incompatible with 
genuine choice. Several were below the age of majority when asked to sign, and the law 
offered no special protection for them. Institutionalisation, and harmful experiences in the 
institutions, often undermined mothers’ capacity to resist that pressure. Several witnesses 
described how they had carefully planned to keep their children, but their decisions were 
deliberately overridden. The Commission also heard convincing evidence that many mothers 
formally consented to adoption without fully understanding their legal rights. Disturbingly, 
many witnesses to the Commission gave evidence that children were sometimes removed 
using physical force, and that some mothers acquiesced to adoptions under duress, including 
under direct threat of violence. Although these adoptions were clearly illegal, most affected 
mothers had no practical access to a remedy. 
 
The State was certainly aware that the law on adoption consent was deficient. Rather than act 
to support single mothers, the Oireachtas twice legislated to make it easier to formalise an 
adoption. In 1974, it legislated to reduce the minimum age at which a child could be adopted 
from six months to six weeks, and to allow the High Court to dispense with the natural 
mother’s consent. In 1976, the Supreme Court heard a case in which an adoption order was 
ruled invalid because the Adoption Board had not fulfilled its obligations to be satisfied that 
the mother understood the adoption order’s effects, or her right to withdraw that consent. The 
Oireachtas swiftly legislated to make sure that adoption orders finalised in other similar cases 
could not be challenged.  
 
The law was also inadequate to protect the rights of natural fathers. In cases where fathers 
were aware of their paternity and wished to be involved in raising their children, it was 
difficult for them to assert parental rights. Unmarried fathers did not have a constitutional 
right to custody or guardianship and did not obtain a statutory right to apply for these until 
1964. Until 1998, these fathers were not consulted in relation to proposed adoptions. Legal 
processes in force from 1930 to 1976 allowing mothers to obtain financial support from their 
children’s fathers were cumbersome and ineffective.  
 
The Commission found evidence of intercountry adoptions (4.3) connected to the institutions, 
including cross-border movement involving Northern Ireland. Where children were legally 
adopted under U.S. law, there was often no basis in Irish law for permanent surrender of 
parental rights, and no basis in U.S. law for proper regulation of intercountry adoption. 
Evidence from the 1940s to the 1950s shows that State agents understood that these adoptions 
were not properly regulated under Irish law. The Commission has also seen evidence of 
falsified birth records. The Irish State took no appropriate measures to ensure that American 
adoptive parents were properly vetted. In the case of Catholic adoptions, it effectively 
delegated this responsibility to U.S. Roman Catholic organisations. There is no evidence of 
anything other than ad hoc vetting practices in the case of Protestant adoptions. The 



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Commission has not been able to access the full financial records of organisations involved in 
arranging these adoptions, including donations by adoptive parents. However, it emphasises 
that an adoption may be illegal, and breach the rights of children and natural parents 
involved, irrespective of whether that adoption is part of a commercial exchange  
 
Although many adopted people grew up in secure and loving adoptive families, the 
Commission heard significant and convincing evidence from others who did not. Aspects of 
their suffering could have been avoided with adequate regulation and oversight of the 
adoption process. The Commission emphasises that even a happy adoption does not erase the 
consequences of forced family separation, or the State’s responsibility to redress it. 
 
Surviving relatives of those who died in the institutions, or following a period in an 
institution, experience continuing harm today because reliable records are not accessible, and 
many burials cannot be traced. The Commission heard from advocacy groups who framed 
this experience as akin to the aftermath of ‘enforced disappearance’.  
 
The right to identity  
Breaches of the right to private and family life documented by the Commission have 
implications for the right to identity (4.1). Throughout the period under examination, 
adoptions were closed and secret. Ireland still restricts adopted people’s access to their birth 
certificates and other records and restricts relatives’ access to records which may disclose a 
deceased family members’ fate. The Commission also heard evidence from adopted people 
and natural parents demonstrating wilful concealment, deception and obstruction of access 
to records by the State. The Commission urgently recommends law reform in this area. 
 
The right to freedom from discrimination.  
In examining the prevalence of discrimination in the institutions, the Report concentrates on 
just two; Pelletstown and Bessborough. The Commission found ample evidence of 
discrimination against both women and children on the basis of their membership of 
vulnerable groups.  
 

• Mixed-race children experienced institutional racism (5.1). They were subjected to a 
range of physical and verbal abuse because of their race. They were more vulnerable 
to long-term institutionalisation because they were less likely to be recommended for 
adoption, because of their race. Mixed-race children suffered distinctive violations of 
their right to identity, because they were denied information about their racial and 
national origins. 

• Disabled children were less likely to be recommended for adoption because they were 
disabled. Disabled mothers were less likely to be permitted to keep their children 
because they were disabled. Both disabled women and children were vulnerable to 
long-term institutionalisation even where alternatives were available (5.2).  



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• Traveller women (5.3) were often sent to institutions for pre-natal and post-natal care, 
and Traveller children were often sent to institutions on a seasonal basis.24 This 
institutionalisation was consistent with State assimilation policies. Travellers 
experienced both racism and discrimination alongside distinctive violations of 
cultural rights including long-term confinement and lack of opportunities to 
appropriately mourn the dead. 

• Poorer women and girls and their children were more likely to find themselves in 
county ‘homes’, which had the worst living conditions and imposed the most 
demanding forms of unpaid labour. Poorer women and girls were also likely to be 
institutionalised for longer periods or to be moved between institutions including to 
Magdalen Laundries or psychiatric institutions.  

• Religion (5.4) was integral to the regime in the institutions examined, irrespective of 
Christian denomination. Women, girls and children were governed in accordance 
with religious principles, and punished for transgressions against religious teaching, 
irrespective of their own wishes and needs. 
 
 

Discrimination on these grounds intersected with the gender discrimination that permeated 
the wider system. Discrimination within the institutions exacerbated discriminatory cultures 
elsewhere in society. Discrimination is both a violation of human rights and aggravates other 
human rights abuses.  
  

 
24 The term 'Traveller' is used throughout this Report to refer to the Irish Traveller Community or 
Mincéiri. 



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2. SINGLE MOTHERHOOD IN CONTEXT 
 
2.1 CONCEALMENT 
 
Secrecy and censorship around sexuality in twentieth century Ireland ensured that many 
women and girls lived in total ignorance of the facts of reproduction and motherhood. The 
‘shame’ of ‘illegitimacy’ was a pervasive, society-wide taboo, operating with bottom-up and 
top-down force. Shame, related to notions of sexuality and the female body, wielded 
considerable power.25 Families, religious agents, State officials and professionals compelled 
pregnant women and girls to conceal their pregnancies and, often, the sexual abuse which 
had led to conception. The very high rates of maternal institutionalisation in Ireland 
documented in the Report can only be understood within this context of secrecy. The shame 
of ‘illegitimate motherhood’26 could affect generations of one family.27 This drove Ireland’s 
exceptional rates of maternal confinement. As testimony to this Commission shows, 
individuals were in the institutions to hide or be hidden.28 
 
Some families negotiated that culture of concealment by keeping children, so that, for 
example, sons were raised as nephews and granddaughters as daughters. The Commission 
heard from many others that their families refused to support them in raising a child outside 
marriage. Girls raised in religious institutions, similarly, were prevented from keeping their 
children. 
 
In 1948, the Department of Health inspector Alice Litster described children born outside 
marriage as the ‘infant martyrs of convenience, respectability and fear’. Today we recognise 
that women and children suffered for the State’s convenience as much as for familial 
respectability and fear. The State actively supported a culture of concealment (3.1 and 4.1) and 
provided no meaningful alternative.  
 
In the years after independence, authorities (both religious and lay) considered institutional 
containment to be the most appropriate way of dealing with what was perceived to be the 
serious social problem of illegitimacy. This institutional response was dominated by religious 
organisations, regarded by the State as experts in what was termed the ‘reform’ or ‘rescue’ of 
single pregnant women and girls, sometimes referred to as 'offenders' or 'penitents'.29 Post-
1922 and into the 1930s, single motherhood became a key preoccupation of both lay and 
secular leaders. There was frequent public discussion on this issue, especially in newspapers 

 
25 Clara Fischer, ‘Gender, nation, and the politics of shame: Magdalen Laundries and the 
institutionalisation of feminine transgression in modern Ireland’, Signs, 41:4 (2016) 821-43. 
26 Lindsey Earner-Byrne (2007) Mother and child: Maternity and child welfare in Dublin, 1922-60 
(Manchester University Press). 
27 See e.g. Confidential Committee, 999. 
28 Confidential Committee,61. 
29 4.54; 4.113; 9.33; 9.42. 



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and Lenten pastorals. Discussion of single motherhood was also a feature of commentary on 
infanticide trials.30 The issue was characterised by a dual perspective: considerable debate at 
the societal/policy level and very determined secrecy at the individual level. Breaks in this 
code of concealment occurred only rarely, and punitively, in the practice of denunciations 
from the pulpit which were an occasional feature of parish life.31  
 
We cannot discuss the institutions’ ‘welfare’ functions without acknowledging that they 
reinforced this wider culture of shame and secrecy around single pregnant women and girls. 
An institutional response of concealment perpetuated cultural attitudes. Church, State and 
local government supported the segregation of single mothers from other ‘respectable’ 
categories of institutional ‘inmate’.32 For some, time in the institutions may have offered 
respite from other kinds of violence and harm, but they were not a ‘refuge’ from shame or 
concealment.  
 
The emphasis on secrecy persisted across decades, even as significant legal and social changes 
made single motherhood somewhat more feasible.33 As late as 1967,34 the number of children 
adopted was equivalent to 97% of births outside marriage. As new approaches to the 
management of single mothers emerged in the 1970s, both church and State continued to 
emphasise secrecy.35 Witnesses who gave birth in the 1980s/90s reported a continued familial, 
institutional and social emphasis on concealment. For example, the Commission heard one 
account, in this period, of being concealed under coats when driven by nuns to hospital ante-
natal appointments.36 
 
As the Confidential Committee heard, secrecy had many consequences beyond the fact of 
institutionalisation itself; for a few mothers it meant that their labour was induced early,37 for 
many secrecy around adoption made it a much more difficult experience,38 while, for more, 
secrecy hampered later attempts to trace natural mothers or adopted children.39 It is also clear 
from the testimony that secrecy, underpinned by attitudes to sexuality steeped in shame, 

 
30 For example: Karen M. Brennan, ‘“A Fine Mixture of Pity and Justice”: The Criminal Justice Response 
to Infanticide in Ireland 1922-1949,’ Law and History Review, 31 (2013) 793; Elaine Farrell, ‘Infanticide 
of the Ordinary Character: An Overview of the Crime in Ireland, 1850-1900,’ Irish Economic and Social 
History, 39 (2012) 56; Clíona Rattigan, ‘What Else Could I Do?’: Single Mothers and Infanticide, Ireland 
1900-1950 (Irish Academic Press, 2012); Louise Ryan, ‘The Press, The Police and Prosecution 
Perspectives on Infanticide in the 1920s,’ in Diane Urquhart and Alan Hayes (eds), Irish Women’s 
History (Irish Academic Press, 2004). Ciara Breathnach, Eunan O’Halpin, ‘Scripting blame: Irish 
coroners’ courts and unnamed infant dead, 1916–32’, Social History, 39 (2014); Ciara Breathnach, Eunan 
O’Halpin, ‘Registered “unknown” infant fatalities in Ireland, 1916-1932’ Irish Historical Studies, 38 
(2012): 70-88. 
31 9.63- 9.69. 
32 4.60; 19.12; 18.40. 
33 6.75-6.76. 
34 6.3. Births in mother and baby homes peaked in that year. 
35 12.49-12.51. 
36 Confidential Committee 60.  
37 Confidential Committee 74 - 75. 
38 Confidential Committee 125; 32.235. 
39 Confidential Committee 170. 



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created power differentials within the institutions which made them particularly punitive and 
degrading environments for women, girls and children with lasting impacts on self-esteem. 
Especially in the earlier decades under review, the desire to maintain secrecy motivated some 
women to leave their local areas to give birth.40 Some left Ireland, going to Northern Ireland, 
Britain and elsewhere, temporarily or permanently, because a stay in an institution was 
difficult to conceal from friends, neighbours and family.41 The primacy of secrecy also meant 
that simple breaches of privacy could have very serious consequences.42 
 
2.2 IMPACTS OF THE LAW ON ILLEGITIMACY 
 
The law on illegitimacy compounded social stigmatisation of single mothers and their 
children. Children born to single mothers and not legitimated by their parents’ marriage had 
no legal relationship to their fathers.43 Sole responsibility for their welfare rested on their 
mother44 and they could not succeed to their father’s estate.45 After 1964, men could apply for 
guardianship of non-marital children, but the child remained ‘illegitimate’.46  
 
The legal status of illegitimacy, indicating the lack of a male protector, facilitated many illegal 
practices considered in detail in this Report. The de facto, but extra-legal, detention of women 
and children in institutions (3.4) was justified by the need to conceal the shame of extra marital 
birth. Vaccine trials were conducted on their children without parental consent (3.9). Children 
born in England to single Irish mothers were ‘repatriated’47 with little regard for their views 
(3.4). Adoption was facilitated outside a legal framework or with scant regard for the mother’s 
consent (4.2) because it offered a supposed solution to the problems associated with the status 
of illegitimacy.48 The Adoption Act 1952 further emphasised the distinction between non-
marital and marital children by providing only for the adoption of non-marital children and 
orphans. Falsification of birth records for adopted children (4.2) was notionally justified by 
the perceived need to avoid the stigma of illegitimacy.49 At times, high infant mortality was 
rationalised, spuriously, by reference to the child’s legal status.50  
 

 
40 8.7, 8.15, 8.30. 
41 7.23. 
42 6.76. 
43 Guardianship of Infants Act 1884. The Legitimacy Act 1931 allowed for the legitimation of children 
through subsequent marriage of their parents. 
44 Public Assistance Act 1939. 
45 This distinction remained after the passage of the Succession Act 1965, OB v S [1984] IR 316. 
46 Guardianship of Infants Act 1964. 
47 These women and girls are associated with the term ‘PFI’ or ‘Pregnant from Ireland’. The 
Commission recognises that this term is depersonalising and offensive. 
48 6.1. For an example of pre-1952 arguments presenting legal adoption as a solution to the difficulties 
of illegitimacy see EW McCabe, ‘The Need for a Law of Adoption’ Dublin: Journal of the Statistical and 
Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, Vol. XXVIII, Part II, 1948/1949, pp178-191. McCabe was Vice President 
of the Adoption Society. 
49 32.390. 
50 See e.g. 5.43, 9.97. 



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The law reflected the stigma of single motherhood. In Dáil debates on the Illegitimate 
Children (Affiliation Orders) Bill in 1929, single mothers were referred to as ‘poor girls’, 
‘unfortunate girls’, ‘hardened sinners’, and ‘immoral’. The law’s overriding concern was to 
protect men from unscrupulous women who could potentially blackmail them for monetary 
support.51 Witnesses born to, and raised by, single mothers testified to the impact of this status 
on their lives. They were labelled using such terms as ‘bastard,’52 ‘spawn of the Devil,’53 or 
‘the nothing lad,’54 and described as ‘virtual lepers’ in the Dáil.55 Requirements to produce 
birth certificates made their status public and impacted on their ability to gain employment 
and participate in education.56 
 
The government largely ignored the issue of illegitimacy, despite campaigns by organisations 
like Cherish57 and a 1974 recommendation by the Roman Catholic Bishops conference that it 
be abolished.58 The Law Reform Commission recommended abolition in 1982, but steps were 
not taken to equalise the treatment of children until the European Court of Human Rights 
ruled in 1986 that the Irish law on illegitimacy contravened the European Convention on 
Human Rights.59 In 1979, that Court had already ruled that discrimination against single 
mothers and their children was a violation of the Convention.60 Oireachtas debates on the 
Status of Children Act 1987, which removed the legal status of illegitimacy, recognised the 
need for equality between children. However, the Act continues to deny adopted people a 
statutory right to a declaration of parentage.61 No apology has been offered to the thousands 
of children and adults discriminated against by society and the State as a result of the legal 
status of legitimacy.62  
 
 
2.3 NATURAL FATHERS 
 
Without discounting issues of personal responsibility, it is important to set paternal agency in 
its social and legal context. Legislative policy strongly preferred maternal over paternal 
responsibility for non-marital children. Under the 1964 Guardianship of Infants Act, a single 
mother was her children’s sole guardian during her lifetime; it is only in more recent decades 
that non-marital fathers have been able to acquire joint guardianship.63 Unless the non-marital 

 
51 Maria Luddy, ‘Moral Rescue and Single mothers in Ireland in the 1920s’ (2011) 30 Women’s Studies 
797-817, 812. 
52 See e.g. Confidential Committee, 52.  
53 36.83. 
54 36.82. 
55 1.126. 
56 1.125. Some Ministers at the time considered the short form certificate to be a ‘liberal’ measure. 
57 36.86. 
58 36.90. 
59 Johnston & Others v Ireland (1986) EHRR 203. 
60 Marckx v Belgium, Series A, No. 31 (1979) 2 E.H.R.R. 330. 
61 S. 35(1). 
62 36.98. 
63 See the Guardianship of Infants Act 1964, as amended by the Status of Children Act 1987, the Children 
Act 1997 and the Children and Family Relationships Act 2015. 



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father is the child’s guardian or a person having charge of or control over the child at the 
relevant time, he has no right to veto an adoption and (prior to 1998) was not automatically 
consulted in relation to proposed adoptions.64 From 1863 until 1930, financial support could 
be claimed under the Bastardy (Ireland) Act, 1863.65 From 1930 to 1976, an unmarried father 
could be pursued for financial support by means of an affiliation order, but this was difficult 
and expensive to pursue (3.2).66 Prior to 1988, a non-marital child had no entitlement to inherit 
from their father’s estate.67  
 
Testimony given to the Confidential Committee highlights an alarming number of 
pregnancies resulting from rape,68 incest,69 and the sexual exploitation of minors.70 This often 
occurred at the hands of family members, foster parents,71 and in some cases priests.72 There 
are several accounts of pregnancy following gang rape73 and one account of a woman being 
sexually exploited by family members for payment.74 The testimonies exhibit a widespread 
view among women that there was no point in reporting these incidents to the Gardaí, as they 
would not have been believed or no action would have been taken. These experiences seemed 
to have drawn little empathy from those who ran the institutions (3.5).75  
 
Paternal responsibility is a recurring theme in evidence given to the Confidential Committee. 
There are multiple references to natural fathers disappearing on discovering the pregnancy. 
In some cases, this reflected fear of negative social repercussions and family reaction76 and the 
widespread stigma and shame associated with pregnancy outside of marriage. News of an 
unplanned pregnancy could conceivably ruin the standing and reputation of an entire family, 
and there is evidence of some fathers being disinherited and having no choice but to emigrate 

 
64 See, for instance, State (Nicolaou) v An Bord Uchtála [1966] IR 567 See also the circumstances of JK v 
VW [1990] 2 IR 427 and WO’R v EH [1996] 2 IR 248. But see the Adoption Act 1998 and s.16 of the 
Adoption Act 2010. 
65 Poor Law Guardians could take civil cases to recover maintenance costs. 
66 Illegitimate Children (Affiliation Orders) Act, 1930. For accounts of attempts to obtain orders see 4.86-
4.87.  
67 See O’B v S [1984] IR 316 but see also the Status of Children Act 1987. 
68 Confidential Committe.13, 14 (twice), 15, 17, 19 (twice), 20, 22 (multiple), 23 (twice), 26 (several 
accounts), 28, 30, 32, 33, 34, 36, 43, 48, 51, 53, 59, 61, 64 (twice), 68, 70, 73, 76, 80, 82, 83, 91, 94, 97, 103, 
108, 109, 110, 130, 150, 151, 155, 156, 158, 165, 166, and 173. 
69 See the Punishment of Incest Act 1908. Incest involves sexual intercourse between a man and his 
mother, sister, daughter, or granddaughter. Sarah-Anne Buckley, ‘Family and Power: Incest in Ireland, 
1880-1950’ in Anthony McElligott (et al) Power in History: from Medieval Ireland to the Post-Modern 
World, Historical Studies XXVII, Irish Academic Press, June 2011 shows that in practice prosecution 
required evidence other than the victim’s e.g. the corroboration of a witness or evidence of pregnancy. 
70 Confidential Committee, 14; see also 22, 83 and 103. 
71 Confidential Committee, 155 and 173. 
72 Confidential Committee, 15, 43, 91 and 130. 
73 Confidential Committee, 19 (raped by two local boys), 26, 34 and 36 (gang-rapes) and 32 (raped by a 
group of older men). 
74 Confidential Committee,109. 
75 Confidential Committee, 48. 
76 Confidential Committee, 20. 



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on fathering a non-marital child.77 In some cases, fathers were unaware of their paternity.78 
Where fathers did seek to take paternal responsibility for their children they were often 
rebuffed.79 The perception that a partner was ‘beneath’ the family, or of the wrong religious 
background, militated against some proposed marriages being approved (as parents were 
anxious to ensure matches suited to their families’ social standing).80 The Commission 
acknowledges that very few natural fathers affected by these issues have spoken publicly 
about their experiences, suggesting the ongoing effects of stigma. 
 
Case law on nullity relating to marriages contracted between the 1960s and 1980s indicates a 
pattern of women and men propelled into marriage on discovery of a non-marital 
pregnancy,81 often as a result of familial pressure amounting to duress or undue influence. 
For example, in N (otherwise K) v. K82 a pregnant 19-year-old married her first sexual partner 
out of obedience to her parents. In O’B v. R83 a pregnant 17-year-old married her first 
boyfriend in the face of parental pressure. These cases remind us that marriages begun and 
maintained out of a sense of duty were often unhappy and did not respect either spouse’s 
autonomy.84 Today, many would be recognised as forced marriage.85 
 
 
2.4 PROFIT AND RESPONSIBILITY 
 
Individuals, and religious orders, lay religious organisations, local government bodies, 
corporations and public bodies, including universities, benefitted financially from State-
sanctioned systems for the management of single mothers and their children. (3.1) This is in 
line with the economic context of other institutions previously the subject of State 
investigations, including the Magdalen Laundries.86 It has not been possible to examine the 
financial records of each institution, partly because some orders failed to provide relevant 
records to the Commission. However, there is little doubt that those running the institutions 
in question benefitted economically from them, notwithstanding the divergence in their 
financial performance or the inadequacies of state funding.  
 

 
77 Conrad M. Arensberg and Solon T. Kimball, Family and Community in Ireland (2nd ed., Harvard 
University Press 1968). See also the discussion in Chapter 9. 
78 Confidential Committee,164.  
79 Confidential Committee, 144-145. See also The State (K.M. & R.D. v. Minister for Foreign Affairs & 
Others [1979].  
80 8.60-8.62. 
81 8.58-8.59; 9.18. 
82 [1985] IR 733. 
83 [1999] 4 IR 168. 
84 See also MK v FMcC [1982] ILRM 277, W (C) v (C) [1989] IR 696, AC v PJ [1995] 2 IR 253. See further 
Walsh J. in G v. An Board Uchtála [1980] 1 IR 32 noting that such a marriage would also be injurious to 
the child. 
85 For a 1950s civil service reference to ‘forced marriage’, see 8.38. 
86 Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the 
Magdalen Laundries (2013), Chapters 13-15, 19, 20; Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child 
Abuse (2009), Executive Summary, 24. 



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While certain religious orders shared detailed financial information, such as the Good 
Shepherd Sisters (Dunboyne), others did not, despite numerous requests. These include the 
Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary (Bessborough, Sean Ross and 
Castlepollard).  
 
It is important when considering the financial aspects of the operation of the institutions to 
avoid a narrow focus on the profitability, given the false implication that its absence may in 
some way amount to an absolution of responsibility.87 In a similar vein, it is immaterial that 
those managing the institutions were themselves poorly paid or unpaid; this does not undo 
any economic exploitation of women, girls and their children. Indeed, the underpayment of 
staff may have reinforced the expectation that unpaid labour (3.3) was generally acceptable. 
 
Institutions often benefited from per capita state payments per ‘resident’. In addition, as noted 
at (2 and 3.3), at various times some institutions relied on charges made on women’s income 
and on their unpaid labour. In both instances, they were deriving financial benefit from the 
women’s unlawful detention (3.4). Roman Catholic religious orders and Protestant groups 
accrued further benefits in the form of donations and enhanced public reputation as providers 
of welfare and healthcare services. Several organisations which ran these institutions are 
active participants, directly or through successors, in these sectors in Ireland and elsewhere 
today. Some have also benefited from income related to property no longer used for the 
institutionalisation of women and children but originally acquired for that purpose. All 
economic exploitation, whether in the form of unremunerated labour, payments for adoptions 
or payments for forced participation in medical trials, (3.9) aggravated other harms 
documented in the Report, regardless of whether this exploitation was profitable.  
 
The State’s constitutional and human rights obligations are engaged in this context 
irrespective of whether relevant private institutions profited from abusive practices. In the 
context of redress and the potential contributions to be made by churches and associated 
religious orders and lay groups, the financial performance of individual institutions should 
not be a decisive consideration. Similarly, the responsibilities of other actors associated with 
the vaccine trials, including universities, colleges, and pharmaceutical companies are not 
circumscribed by any economic benefits that may have accrued.  
 
In accordance with our Terms of Reference, the Commission recommends that consideration 
be given to further investigation, as a matter falling within the public interest, of all economic 
aspects of how these institutions operated, whether commercial or otherwise. This 
investigation should set the institutions in the social and historical context of the broader 
finances of the religious entities involved.88 This context includes institutional connections to 
other beneficiaries including corporations, universities and the professions. 

 
87 See Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the 
Magdalen Laundries (2013), Chapter 20, 993, stating that the Magdalen Laundries 'were operated on a 
subsistence or close to break-even basis rather than on a commercial or highly profitable basis'. 
88 S.I. No. 57/2015 – Commission of Investigation (Mother and Baby Homes and certain related Matters) 
Order 2015, Section 6. 



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3. IN THE INSTITUTIONS 
 

3.1. GOVERNANCE AND RESPONSIBILITY 
 
There is surprisingly little evidence that national politicians took a serious interest in the 
welfare of single mothers for most of the twentieth century. When individual politicians 
raised critical questions, these were often brushed aside.89 Local government, similarly, did 
not prioritise the welfare of mothers and children living in the institutions. However, all of 
the institutions investigated by the Commission were regulated by the State and all received 
some State funding. Oversight was conducted by both the relevant local government and the 
Department of Local Government and Public Health/Department of Health.90 Two main 
funding systems can be identified. The four county ‘homes’ within the scope of this 
investigation as well as the mother and baby institutions at Tuam, Kilrush and Pelletstown 
were owned and controlled by local government, as successors to the pre-independence 
workhouses and Poor Law Union system. Their daily operations were almost entirely funded 
by the local government (from local rates) and staff, including religious staff, were local 
government employees. The remaining institutions were owned by Roman Catholic and 
Protestant religious groups. These institutions received two kinds of significant State 
funding.91 First, most received public capital financing from the Hospitals Commission to 
fund substantial building works92 (e.g., building a maternity hospital or a smaller maternity 
unit). Second, all received capitation payments93 - a type of maintenance payment - from the 
local government for each pregnant woman or girl, and each child, that the institution 
admitted.94 St Patrick's Guild and St Gerard's were charities created at the behest of Church 
authorities, and required a payment from mothers.95 
 
The Registration of Maternity Homes Act 1934 set out a statutory power of inspection for the 
Department of Local Government and Public Health (‘DLGPH’), later the Department of 
Health, regarding all places where women and girls gave birth or received nursing care 

 
89 4.118, For instance, in 1973 during debates on the Adoption Act 1974 Sen Timothy McAuliffe called 
for the institutions to be abolished, but then Minister of Justice, Charles Haughey said it was beyond 
his remit. Adoption Bill, 1963: Second Stage, 
https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/seanad/1963-12-18/speech/131/.   
90 See discussion on a potential extension of the Tuam institution in 1960 by the Western Health Board 
Visiting Committee, discussions as to whether it was ‘economical’ and in ‘better condition’ than similar 
institutions elsewhere. ‘Time for people of Tuam to break silence on ‘home babies’’ Irish Times April 
23rd, 2019. 
91 Several institutions also advertised to solicit private donations. 
92 1.72-1.82; 4.66-4.79. The Hospitals Commission, though technically independent, worked closely with 
the DLGPH. The Hospitals Commission inspected institutions, commenting on facilities and matters 
that required improvement.  
93 Bethany and Denny House did not seek these until the mid-1940s. Regina Coeli was not in receipt of 
regular State funding but it did receive funding from the Hospitals Trust Fund in 1950. 
94 Bethany, Denny House and St. Gerard’s also received grants under the Maternity and Child Welfare 
Scheme, to subsidise the costs of boarding out children. 
95 3.37 



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following a birth.96 This Act allowed the DLGPH to visit the institutions and recommend 
improvements. In practice, inspectors inspected nurseries and living quarters as well as the 
maternity units, but this was conditional on management co-operation.97 County ‘homes’ 
were more broadly regulated regarding all aspects of their operation, including diet and living 
conditions, for all residents before 1934.98 All these institutions were (or ought to have been99) 
subject to State regulation from 1934. It was after 1934 that the ‘private’ institutions began 
accommodating pregnant women and girls in significant numbers.100  
 
The DLGPH had statutory power to prevent a local authority from maintaining women at a 
particular institution, but this was rarely used101 and there was no clear policy on when local 
government powers to withdraw a maternity home’s licence102 should be exercised. The 
defects in this division of powers are evident from events at Bessborough in the early 1940s. 
DLGPH inspectors raised serious concerns about high infant mortality rates, but the local 
authority, which was aware of the death rates, did not respond.103 HSE Reports in 2012 
highlighted the significantly high infant mortality rates in both Bessborough and Tuam. In 
Bessborough, between 1934 until 1953 nearly one child died every fortnight, while there are 
no records of infant mortality after 1953.104 For Tuam, one HSE Report states that the infant 
mortality rate was, at times, in excess of 50%.105 The DLGPH eventually temporarily 
prohibited local government from funding public patients admitted to Bessborough. 
However, ‘private patients’ continued to be admitted, and there is no evidence that local 
government officials considered preventing this. 106 
 
Considering: 
 
(1) the statutory powers of regulation conferred on a government department,  
(2) the public funding of capital projects, and  
(3) the system of financial support from local government for these institutions 

 

 
96 1.109 – 1.121; 2.10 – 2.11; 4.89-4.96 referring to s. 12(1) 1934 Act 
97 See e.g. 18.110 in relation to high mortality rates at Bessborough. 
98 4.5. 
99 Regina Coeli resisted registration under the 1934 Act, in part because women did not give birth there, 
but an exemption was never officially granted, and it was eventually inspected; 21.118- 21.134; 21.164. 
Dunboyne, founded in 1955, went unregistered until 1982.  
100 In this sense, State funding also actively contributed to the system’s expansion. From 1936, the 
Vatican permitted nuns to engage in midwifery, which enhanced demand for on-site maternity units. 
101 It was used in Castlepollard in 1941 in relation to severe overcrowding (18.111). It was eventually 
used temporarily at Bessborough in the 1940s after several years of known high mortality rates (18.116).  
102 Section 9(1) 1934 Act 
103 18.112 
104 Conall Ó Fátharta ‘Government already knew of baby deaths’ Irish Examiner June 3, 2015 
http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/special-investigation-government-already-knew-of-baby-
deaths334260.html  
105 Conall ó Fátharta, ‘McAleese inquiry told of Tuam mother and baby home deaths in 2012’ Irish 
Examiner, 22 May 2017 https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-20450612.html 
106 18.126 



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it is clear that the State established a distinct system to cater for single pregnant women and 
girls. This was not a haphazard system, but one established with care and deliberation by the 
State in partnership with the religious agents.107 It is worth noting that, while this system was 
not unique to Ireland, mother and baby institutions in Ireland were larger than in comparable 
countries and remained in existence for longer.108  
 
In line with population demographics, most institutions under investigation were run by 
orders of Roman Catholic women religious. Bethany Home, the Church of Ireland’s Denny 
House, Miss Carr’s (all Protestant institutions run by lay and religious groups) and the Roman 
Catholic Legion of Mary’s Regina Coeli, though relying more on lay and voluntary labour, 
were also missionary-minded in their approach. The Roman Catholic church was the 
dominant influence on the system, morally and politically, though its views did not depart 
radically from those of Protestant religious leaders. It is clear that the State-established system 
for the ‘care’ of single pregnant women and girls was entirely dependent on the availability 
and willingness of religious agents to provide these services. Roman Catholic religious orders 
assumed control of most institutions, in part because they had played key roles in 
administering workhouses, industrial schools and reformatories since before 
independence.109 Protestant institutions had an even longer gestation, though they entered a 
relative decline as Roman Catholic agencies emerged. However, the delegation of power to 
religious agents was also in line with Catholic110 and Protestant visions of ‘subsidiarity’, under 
which the State could fund but not control social services, and in which direct State 
intervention was considered a last resort.  
 
The State effectively delegated key public functions to religious-run institutions. Even where 
religious institutional staff were paid public employees, they were generally selected and 
managed by their own religious superiors. At least until 1960, religious agents in charge of 
institutions enjoyed significant autonomy111 in determining which institutions they would 
run,112 which categories of women and girls they would accept or refuse to accommodate,113 
and how long women and children would stay.114 The DLGPH in co-operation with British 
Catholic charities,115 also established a scheme to ‘repatriate’ pregnant Catholic women, from 
Britain (3.4). British voluntary and statutory welfare services co-operated with this practice. 
 

 
107 On the origins of the system see 4.7-4.10. See also 19.13 for an example of a religious order being 
invited to establish a second institution. 
108 Executive Summary, 15.  
109 4.32 
110 See also Casti Connubii (1931) in which Pope Pius IX warned against unduly generous state help to 
single mothers. 
111 Their policies eased, allowing shorter stays and accepting a wider range of women as numbers of 
women entering the institutions began to fall, from the late 1950s; 12.105-12.106. 
112 20.67. 
113 4.54; 4.107; 6.51;10.10; 15.52; 16.75-16.76; 16.80; 18.30; 19.22; 20.75. Admissions policies especially 
affected women on a second or subsequent pregnancy. 
114 4.112; 15.105 (on retention of older children in Tuam); 18.177; 19.122.  
115 On the role of Cardinal Hinsley here see 7.14. 



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Local government officials habitually deferred to Roman Catholic orders’ preferences, or to 
those of the local bishops. Religious authorities or management often ignored or attempted to 
deflect the government’s few and ambivalent attempts to enforce any consequences following 
inspections of substandard institutions. By the 1940s, government inspectors were taking a 
more critical attitude to the institutions,116 but met with resistance in some cases.117 Some 
institutions justified this refusal of co-operation in terms of their purported religious rights to 
self-government.118 On one occasion, the local bishop and the Sisters of Mercy withdrew 
services when statutory oversight was exercised regarding appointment of personnel at 
Kilrush.119 The local bishop directly contributed to delay in removal of the Mother Superior 
at Bessborough120 despite the appalling rate of preventable infant deaths there. When the 
Department of Health sought to begin closing the institutions in the mid-1950s, some bishops 
resisted.121 Reform proposals which would have dramatically improved the lives of women 
and children were deferred or not pursued, because of religious resistance.122 It is clear that 
the State’s regulatory powers did not remove the need for negotiation with religious 
authorities. 
 
Religious influence on State policy did not abate with the closure of many institutions in the 
1960s and 70s. Religious organisations including the CPRSI (later Cúnamh) Ally, CURA123 
and the Protestant Adoption Society (later PACT) remained active in the regulation of single 
mothers and their children, even as the practice of containing pregnant women and girls and 
new mothers in specialist institutions fell out of use. Religious124 and State125 responses to 
single mothers changed as awareness of reliance on abortion travel rose,126 and much stigma 
previously associated with single mothers and their families was transposed onto abortion-
seekers.127  
 
The Commission acknowledges the Clann Project’s argument, made in its very helpful 
submissions, that the State is obliged to regulate and intervene to protect vulnerable people 
from known harms.128 Under Article 40.3 of the Constitution, the State’s laws must respect 
and as far as practicable defend and vindicate the personal rights of the citizen. The State did 

 
116 5.1. 
117 5.35; 5.71. 
118 5.101; 18.67 – 18.69 (citing canon law). 
119 16.37. 
120 5.47 – 5.62; 5.75; 18.122. 19.52. 
121 6.66-6.71; 15.116-15.124. 
122 5.101-5.108; 6.64; 9.123. 
123 12.124-12.142. 
124 7.60; 7.67; 12.4; 12.122. 
125 12.86. 
126 12.86; 12.124 noting that the majority of English women having abortions in the 1970s under the 
1967 Act were married while the majority of Irish women were single. 
127 See e.g. 12.122.  
128 See e.g. O’Keefe v Ireland App no. 35810/09 (2014) 59 EHRR 15; HRC General Comment No 31, 
‘The Nature of the General Legal Obligation Imposed on States Parties to the Covenant’ (29 March 2004) 
UN Doc CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.13 para 8; Storck v Germany (2006) 43 EHRR 6, para 102. 



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not rid itself of that responsibility by delegating key functions to ‘private’ institutions,129 
especially where victims of abuse had no realistic alternative to using them (3.3 and 3.4). The 
State was aware, at various times, of many risks of abuse posed by institutionalisation. Despite 
this awareness, it did not offer effective protection to single mothers and their children.  
 
 
3.2 SOCIAL WELFARE  
 
Previous Irish inquiries into institutional abuse have shown that poverty was a key predictor 
of institutionalisation in industrial schools and Magdalen laundries. Women of all 
backgrounds disclosed serious abuses to the Commission. However, single mothers were 
often poor and unemployed, and many lived in poverty once discharged from the institutions. 
Middle class single women lost jobs on pregnancy;130 this risk applied to Gardaí131, 
schoolteachers132 and civil servants. The State effectively excluded single mothers from 
accessing contributory social assistance schemes until the 1970s. 133 As early as the 1920s, the 
State was aware of some arguments for making direct social welfare payments to single 
mothers.134 In the 1930s, when the State introduced pensions for widows, no consideration 
was given to extending equivalent benefits to single mothers.135 Single mothers living in the 
community with their children could be paid ‘home assistance’; a relic of the Poor Law. It was 
largely an emergency payment, made at the discretion of local government,136 and practice 
varied from one locality to another.137 The children’s allowance introduced in 1944 did not 
apply to the first child.138 From 1953, all women who made social insurance contributions 
were entitled to twelve weeks of maternity allowance under the Social Welfare Act 1952.139 

 
129 In addition, at least since 1961, Irish constitutional law has recognised that constitutional rights 
have horizontal effect; that private bodies as well as state bodies must recognise individual 
constitutional rights: Educational Co of Ireland v Fitzpatrick (No 1) [1961] IR 323. 
130 8.18. 
131 12.146. 
132 18.339; 12.146; Flynn v. Power [1985] IR 648.  
133 From 1948, Britain made more generous means-tested benefits available to single mothers on the 
same basis as married mothers, though statutory entitlements to housing came much later and mother 
and baby homes remained an important feature of the social landscape; Anthony McCashin, Continuity 
and Change in the Welfare State (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) 62. It should be noted that the Beveridge 
report recommended ‘further examination’ of ways to provide state support to single mothers, 
especially where the male cohabitee was already married or a divorced man had remarried, as they 
could not easily fit into the system of social insurance. Yet, like many of Beveridge’s recommendations, 
this was not taken forward by the post-war Labour government. See, Social Insurance and Allied 
Services, Cmd 6404 (1942) (London: HMSO), paras 347–348 cited by Pat Thane, Single motherhood in 
Twentieth Century England, (2011) Women's History Review, 20:1, 11-29, 21. 
134 35.11. See also 5.90-5.95. 
135 4.115. 
136 See ss. 9 and 35, Public Assistance Act, 1939.  The ISPCC were also involved in this system: 
http://www.childabusecommission.ie/rpt/pdfs/CICA-VOL5-01.pdf  
137 1.85- 1.87; 4.56; 12. 64 – 12.68, 35.9. Since local government funding came from the rates, more money 
was available in wealthier areas. 
138 35.21. 
139 1.84; 35.27. The first maternity benefit was paid under the 1911 National Insurance Act.  

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Single women could also, in theory, claim unemployment benefit under that Act140 if they had 
worked in insured employment for the requisite period, but could not claim a dependant 
allowance for a child,141 and women were routinely questioned about the care of children in 
making applications.142 Until the 1970s, women and girls had no significant access to public 
social workers who might inform them of their options.143 Even then, independent, woman-
centred advice was not guaranteed (4.2). 
 
The Affiliation Orders (Ireland) Act 1930 was enacted to update the previous law on 
‘bastardy’.144 It was often used to enable local government to recover the costs of maintaining 
single mothers and their children in institutions. The Department of Justice also hoped that 
imposing liability on fathers would prevent infanticide and ‘prostitution’, reflecting 
unsubstantiated societal assumptions about the morality of single motherhood.145 Affiliation 
applications were available in Irish law until 1976. Some local government officials pursued 
putative fathers146 at great risk to mothers’ privacy. The applications rarely succeeded.147 Even 
when the application was successful, men were often too poor to pay or left the country to 
avoid payment.148 The maximum maintenance sum awarded under an affiliation order was 
£1 per week and remained at that rate until 1972.149  
 
Instead of direct financial support, therefore, the State offered institutionalisation. Lack of 
income, combined with the effects of overwhelming stigma, meant that many women and 
girls had little choice but to accept it. Most women living in institutions were maintained there 
by local government, at officials’ discretion.150 To gain admission, women and girls often 
needed the assistance of an intermediary such as a doctor, charity,151 civil servant or 
clergyman.152 From 1942, the decision to admit a woman or girl to an institution fell to the 
county manager. Local government also had discretion to charge women or their families for 
a contribution to maintenance,153 often risking women’s privacy.154 Later, the Health Act 1953 
provided for a statutory entitlement to assistance in the form of admission to an institution.155 

 
140 In theory, the same could be said of the Unemployment Assistance Act 1934. 
141 The Social Welfare Act 1952, s 26(c), provided that men could claim an allowance for dependent 
children, but there was no similar provision for single women or widows.  
142 Joint Committee on Women’s Rights, Second Report: Interim Report, Social Welfare (Houses of the 
Oireachtas, 1985).  
143 12.41. 
144 Illegitimate Children (Affiliation Orders) Act 1930; 4.81-4.87. 
145 4.83. 
146 4.84-4.87; 18.63. 
147 4.85. 
148 4.82; 18.63. 
149 12.67. 
150 4.100; 10.11. The power originates after independence with the Local Government (Temporary 
Provisions) Act 1923, and is carried forward by the Public Assistance Act, 1939, the Health Act 1953 
and the Health Act 1970. 
151 From 1962, the CRPSI could make arrangements for women’s admission to a home; 6.76. 
152 8.5. In some cases, this was done on her behalf by the DLGPH; 8.31. 
153 8.44; See similarly Denny House at 23.26. 
154 See e.g., 8.35-8.36; 19.149.  
155 19.144. s.54. 



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The Commission found evidence that local government officials resented these maintenance 
costs,156 and found cases in which they refused to pay for a mother's upkeep.157 
 
As in the case of the industrial schools, capitation payments were more generous than 
payments available to families in the community,158 including in the later period under 
review. The State distributed resources to institutions which could have been of substantial 
benefit to single mothers if paid directly to them instead. From the late 1950s onwards, as 
fewer women and girls used the institutions and operating costs rose, the State initially 
responded by initiating plans to close some institutions and consolidate the system. Only later 
did it begin to pay single mothers directly. The emphasis on adoption from the 1950s onwards 
can also be understood in this context, because it reduced the costs associated with 
fostering/boarding out or further institutionalisation.159 
 
The Unmarried Mother’s Allowance (UMA) was finally introduced in 1973, with the aim of 
supporting mothers to retain custody of their children. Its introduction reflected growing 
tolerance of single mothers from the Catholic hierarchy, particularly as more Irish women 
travelled to England to access abortion services (3.1). There was increasing pressure from the 
EEC (now the EU) to improve gender equality, and Irish feminist organisations including 
Cherish advocated publicly for single mothers. The impact of UMA should not be 
exaggerated. It is unclear how many of those giving birth in institutions knew that it was 
available, especially when it was first introduced.160 Pregnant women and girls could not 
claim UMA before their child was born, and so it did not provide any support to those held 
in relevant institutions.161 Continued social stigma prevented many women and girls who 
were traditionally dependent on their family, from accessing it,162 and public information 
initiatives were very poor.163 A significant network of support organisations for single 
mothers did not emerge until the later 1970s.164 
 
There is no evidence of systematic policy consideration of the particular socio-economic 
challenges affecting single mothers.165 Unlike deserted wives’ allowance, UMA was a means-
tested benefit, paid in the expectation that women would be full-time mothers, rather than 

 
156 4.84; 4.103; 9.104; 18.24; 18.209; 1917; 19.23 (a rare case of reluctance to defer to the clergy given the 
expense involved). A key dimension of stigmatisation of single motherhood was connected to the idea 
that they and their children would be a drain on public resources. Fr. Richard Devane, for example, 
warned against women who became ‘the prolific mother[s] of degenerates’; 9.89 
157 7.38; 8.31; 8.38-8.39 on refusal even when requested to do so by the Department of Health; 12:40; 
20.18.  
158 35.11; 35.22-35.23. 
159 11.138. 
160 32.194; 18.356. In 1979, 4,574 women were in receipt of the allowance (12.71). In that year alone, there 
were 3,331 births outside of marriage. 
161 See s. 7(3) Social Welfare Act 1973, which made provision for mothers who had a child ‘residing’ 
with them. 
162 12.72; also Confidential Committee, 93 (1990s). 
163 12.79. 
164 This included Cherish, 12.73-12.90. 
165 Anthony McCashin, ‘Lone Parents in the Republic of Ireland: Enumeration, Descriptions and 
Implications for Social Security’ (1993) The Economic and Social Research Institute. 



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engaging in paid work. Social welfare officers also made ‘humiliating’ efforts to check if 
women were cohabiting with partners.166 Little income was exempt for means-tested 
purposes (with other earnings withdrawn at a rate of 100%) and there was no statutory 
provision to subsidise childcare costs or offset them against earned income. The rate of UMA 
in 1974 was £8.15 per week, with modest annual increases in line with the Consumer Price 
Index, taking it to £13.95 by 1991.  
 
Supplementary welfare allowance, including housing allowance, was paid from 1977.167 
Nevertheless, persistent discrimination made it difficult for single mothers to access rented 
accommodation into the 1990s.168 In 1987, the disposable income of a lone parent family was 
£81 per week compared to £201 for all families. In short, social welfare payments were not 
adequate to enable a dignified life for single mothers and their children.169  Life was extremely 
difficult for single mothers who lacked mutual support and assistance from the child’s father 
or a wider family circle or who were unable to secure a well-paid job.170   
 
 
3.3 UNPAID LABOUR 
 
Many institutions examined by the Commission, including Tuam, Pelletstown and Kilrush, 
were former workhouses. Well into the twentieth century, these institutions enforced regimes 
indistinguishable from the Poor Law system,171 emphasising ‘reform’ and unpaid labour.172  
 
Some institutions required women and girls to use their welfare payments or other income to 
contribute to the institution’s costs.173 The law permitted this. Women and girls also worked 
unpaid for the institutions, much as others did in the Magdalen laundries. Single mothers, 
particularly those in county ‘homes,’174 were subject to strict and punishing work regimes, 
without ordinary workers’ rights such as holidays or sick leave.  
 
Despite government funding, the institutions’ solvency, the maintenance of buildings and 
grounds, and the care of elderly, young and disabled residents, depended on single mothers’ 
unpaid labour.175 Depending on the institution, this could include cooking, heavy scrubbing 
and cleaning, needlework, institutional laundry, packing commercial goods and care work as 
well as work typically done by men such as heavy groundskeeping, farming and cutting wood 

 
166 12.73. 
167 1.87; This replaced home assistance. 
168 12.72; 12.95- 12.102. 
169 12.94. 
170 12.72; MhicMhathúna and MacMathúna v. Ireland [1989] IR, 512. 
171 4.37. 
172 The Public Assistance Act 1939, incorporated much of the earlier legislation e.g. The Poor Relief 
(Ireland) Act 1938 (Chapter 1, para 1.30) and the Pauper Children (Ireland) Act 1938 (Chapter 1, para 
1.48), 1930 ILO Forced Labour Convention. 
173 35.6-35.8. It is not clear whether this practice had ceased by the 1970s e.g. 35.8. 
174 4.42; 10.48- 10.59. A minority of women were paid; 10.57. 
175 See e.g. 30.9. 



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or turf. This kind of work was especially associated with poorer women’s experiences, 
especially in county ‘homes’. It is not comparable with ordinary domestic duties, as women 
who had managed demanding workloads on family farms, or as inmates in other institutions, 
could attest. 176 The Public Assistance Act 1939 provided that ‘inmates’ in receipt of public 
assistance from local government should work without pay.177 The Health Act 1953 eventually 
prohibited the continuation of unpaid labour.178  
 
The Commission is satisfied that many single mothers were expected to work unpaid into at 
least the 1960s.179 However, the Confidential Committee heard evidence of exhausting unpaid 
work in some institutions later in the period under examination. This clear and sustained 
prevalence of unpaid labour was a breach of the State’s obligations under international law to 
prohibit and prevent slavery, servitude and forced labour – a commitment in place since the 
1930s.180 
 
The Commission acknowledges, based on the experience of the Magdalen Restorative Justice 
Scheme,181 that registers and other institutional admissions records may not accurately reflect 
the length of stay in an institution. On the evidence available, it is clear that a two-year stay 
was not uncommon, into the 1960s. This was partly because mothers were retained to provide 
care for their children until they were adopted or boarded out. (3.4). However, there were also 
financial motivations at play. For instance, local government sought to reduce the cost to the 
ratepayers of funding the institutions,182 and this meant that they were keen to retain single 
mothers to do work other than care for their own children. In 1952, the Department of Health 
decided that county ‘homes’ should no longer admit single mothers. However, some 

 
176 See e.g. a complaint about Castlepollard in 1945 at 20.41-20.45. DLGPH inspector Alice Litster 
investigated the complaint but took the view that heavy manual labour was appropriate for the robust 
‘country’ girls involved. One such girl associated the work at Castlepollard with exhaustion, even 
though she was used to working hard on her family farm. See also 12.23. 
177 10.47 Section 25. 
178 Ch 10, para 10.58, see also International Labour Organisation requirements that women in later 
stages of pregnancy are given adequate time off contrary to C029 - Forced Labour Convention, 1930 
(No. 29) to which Ireland as a member (from 1923) of the ILO was bound. 
179 Single mothers were still carrying out work without pay in the Limerick county home in Newcastle 
West in 1962 (Department of Health, INACT/INA/0/449398; INACT/INA/0/464099, cited at  10.60).  
180 Applicable is the 1926 Slavery Convention; 1930 ILO Forced Labour Convention; 1957 UN 
Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices 
Similar to Slavery; ILO Abolition of Forced Labour Convention; International Covenant on Civil and 
Political Rights; ECHR; and arguably the personal rights provisions in Article 40.3 of the Irish 
Constitution. In Ireland’s 1984-85 Country Report to the ILO Committee of Experts overseeing 
implementation of the 1957 Forced Labour Convention, the Irish Government stated that “[i]n view of 
the widespread recognition of the right not to be required to perform forced or compulsory labour as a 
fundamental human right, it may be regarded as virtually certain that the courts would regard it as a 
personal right guaranteed under the Constitution.” See International Labour Organisation, CEACR: 
Individual Observation concerning Convention No. 105, Abolition of Forced Labour, 1957 Ireland 
(ratification: 1958) (1990).  
181 https://www.ombudsman.ie/publications/reports/opportunity-lost/. 
182 4.39 – 4.41. 



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continued to admit them into the early 1960s; reflecting their economic value to these 
institutions.183  

Poverty was a predictor of a longer term of unpaid labour.184 Mothers who could pay for the 
baby’s keep at a private nursing home185 or arrange a private adoption,186 or whose families 
could do so,187 left the institution earlier. In some institutions ‘private patients’ were not 
required to work unpaid. Even after a child had left the institution to be ‘boarded out’, their 
mother could be expected to contribute to their maintenance including by any paid work she 
did inside188 or outside the institution,189 in theory until the child turned 16.190  
 
The unpaid labour requirement had disciplinary as well as financial implications. During 
scrutiny of the Health Bill 1952, Tom Kyne TD (Labour) identified the gendered implications 
of disciplinary working practices in county ‘homes’ when he noted that ‘casual men were no 
longer required to break stones before getting their breakfast…single mothers were still kept 
in…we put them to carry out some of the most menial tasks, made to do unnecessary work, 
just maybe as a lesson to them not to come in again.’191  
 
Labour regimes were harmful in other ways. Depriving mothers of an income limited their 
opportunities for escape and ensured that they would struggle to support their children 
financially.192 Unpaid work was not taken into consideration in assessing social insurance 
contributions. Mothers were also habitually forced to prioritise work over their own welfare 
and that of their children. Women and girls were required to undertake unpaid work while 
heavily pregnant. For instance, one witness reported that in 1966, at St Patrick’s Navan Road 
‘she was on top of a ladder fixing curtains and that she was forced to finish this chore before 
she would be transferred to St Kevin’s (maternity hospital) regardless of the fact she had gone 
into labour.’193 Witnesses described being forced to work to the point of labour, often carrying 
out punitive tasks; one witness described being required to cut the lawn at Bessborough with 
scissors.194 Following the birth, mothers were forced to return to work almost immediately195 

 
183 10.24; 8.39.  
184 4.114; 6.65. 
185 21.93. 
186 18.312 (for example via St. Patrick’s Guild). 
187 18.312; 20.132. 
188 On paid former inmates see 28.50-28.51. 
189 4.114; 10.80. 
190 Public Assistance Act 1939 s. 27. 
191 10.58. 
192 Ch 15, McAleese Report http://www.justice.ie/en/jelr/pages/magdalenrpt2013; Maeve O'Rourke, 
Claire McGettrick, Rod Baker, Raymond Hill et al., CLANN: Ireland's Single mothers and their 
Children: Gathering the Data: Principal Submission to the Commission of Investigation into Mother 
and Baby Homes. Dublin: Justice For Magdalens Research, Adoption Rights Alliance, Hogan Lovells, 
15 October 2018. http://clannproject.org/wp-content/uploads/Clann-Submissions_Redacted-Public-
Version-October-2018.pdf, (Hereinafter ‘Clann Report’) 1.35. 
193 Witness 70, Clann Report, 1.228. 
194 18.373, 18.395. See also Witness 12, Clann Report, 1.226. In the absence of rebutting evidence, we 
accept the witness’s testimony. 
195 Witness 20 (para 1.229) and Witness 5 (para 1.232) Clann Report stated they returned to work within 
days of giving birth. 

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and the limited time that they were permitted to spend with their baby was constrained by 
pressure to complete an arduous list of domestic tasks.196 A government inspector to Athy 
noted a nine-week old infant with a half-finished bottle lying beside her. She suggested to the 
mother that the infant be lap fed and not put into the cradle until she had finished the feed, to 
which the mother replied that ‘she would never get her work done if she had to spend so 
much time feeding the baby.’197 The inspector noted that ‘this is not an isolated case by any 
means,’ and subsequently noted the relative importance of the domestic work of the 
institution compared to the infants’ welfare.198  
 
 
3.4 ADMISSIONS AND DETENTION 
 
Much evidence heard by the Confidential Committee raised concerns around the basis for 
admission to institutions. An immediate question is whether girls and women were 
voluntarily or involuntarily admitted. The question of admission links directly to the 
constitutional principle that no ‘citizen shall be deprived of his personal liberty save in 
accordance with law’.199 Some witnesses described the institutions as a ‘refuge’200 or a 
‘haven’.201 However, many of these witnesses were contrasting the institutions with extensive 
physical, sexual and emotional abuse they experienced in their previous place of residence, 
be that their own home202 or in foster care.203 This is not the same as saying girls and women 
chose to be in the institutions or that they maintained their liberty.  
 
The Commission first explored whether girls and women, were in fact, deprived of their 
liberty.204 The Commission repeatedly heard that children and women were sent to 
institutions by others.205 Some were already institutionalised, and entered from Magdalen 
laundries or industrial schools.206 The decision to enter an institution was rarely the child’s or 
the woman’s own. Testimony shows that family members,207 employers,208 clergy,209 

 
196 10.52. 
197 Department of Health, INACT/INA/0/448082 cited in chapter 10, 10.55. 
198 Ibid. 
199 Article 40.4.1 of Bunreacht na hÉireann, 1937. 
200 Confidential Committee 23, 36, 58. 
201 Confidential Committee 23, 65. 
202 8.46-8.47. 
203 Confidential Committee, 24. 
204 Detention does not become voluntary merely because the detained person is destitute; De Wilde et. 
al. v. Belgium Series A no. 12 p 36 (18 June 1971) or because the person can be released if they pay a 
sum of money; In re Aiken (1881) 8 LR Ir 50; Re: Keller (1888) 22 LR Ir 155. 
205 Alice Litster (8.7) described how in 1945, she directed rural women to an institution even if they had 
intended to enter a private nursing home, return to work and keep their baby.  
206 Confidential Committee 18, 39. 
207 Confidential Committee, 14,.23, 24, 28, p29, 30, 32, 35. 
208 Confidential Committee, 14. 
209 Confidential Committee, 16, 17, 19, 23, 30, 40. 



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Gardaí,210 doctors,211 social workers212 and on one occasion a judge,213 made the decision. One 
woman told the Confidential Committee that a judge told her that if she did not answer his 
question about the paternity of her child ‘I’ll put you away where nobody will see you 
again’.214 The decision to enter an institution was often made for the woman, and government 
inspectors understood that women and girls were often unwilling to enter.215 However, as 
one witness noted, ‘[i]n those days you did what you were told’.216 It was not unheard of for 
a woman to be deceived about her eventual destination.217  
 
Of particular concern are instances where State agents were involved in delivering children 
and women to an institution. Where this action was taken by, or on foot of action by, Gardaí, 
social workers218 and judges, there would have been an understanding that the weight of the 
law was behind it. Disobeying was not a practical choice and would also have been 
understood as an unlawful act. Previous academic studies have referred to institutionalisation 
without the practical possibility of resistance as ‘coercive confinement’; a phrase which 
captures the lack of choice or freedom.219 The Commission has heard sufficient evidence to 
indicate that girls and women were deprived of their liberty in being placed in the institutions. 
For similar reasons, ‘exit’ to another institution, such as a Magdalen laundry,220 can be 
considered a continuation of involuntary detention. Several women were forced to travel to 
work in hospitals and other institutions operated by the same religious orders in Britain. The 
Commission is concerned that women who went on to work in other institutions after their 
release, continued to experience effective servitude.221 
 
Second, the Commission sought to identify a legal basis for these involuntary admissions, as 
required under Article 40 of the Constitution. The evidence available suggests a pattern of 
breach of the constitutional right to liberty. A 1964 Department of Health memorandum 
shows that the State was aware that there was no legislative basis for holding a woman in any 
of these institutions, though women and girls were asked to give ‘reasonable notice’ before 

 
210 Confidential Committee, 43, 28. 
211 Confidential Committee, 20, 23. 
212 Confidential Committee, 18, 25, 28, 33, 38.  
213 Confidential Committee, 13. 
214 Confidential Committee, 13. 
215 6.54; 7.19; 8.24; 11.33; 21.33. 
216 Confidential Committee, 31. 
217 In an Oireachtas Debate in 1963, Sen Timothy McAuliffe described the women and girls ‘as being 
held a prisoner’ Adoption Bill, 1963: Second Stage, 
https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/seanad/1963-12-18/speech/131/.  
218 Confidential Committee, 38 
219 Eoin O'Sullivan and Ian O'Donnell. "Coercive confinement in the Republic of Ireland: The waning of 
a culture of control." Punishment & Society 9.1 (2007): 27-48. 
220 See e.g. EAO v Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul, Sisters of Charity of Refuge and the Health Service 
Executive [2016] IESC 12; Confidential Committee 18, 115; 15.75; ‘second offenders’ in Tuam required 
to enter a laundry. See Schedule 1 Local Government (Temporary Provisions) Act 1923; McAleese 
Report http://www.justice.ie/en/jelr/pages/magdalenrpt2013 105-106. 
221 19.170. 

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departing.222 There are clear resonances here with admissions to Magdalen laundries, which 
frequently lacked any clear legislative basis. 
 
Case law from the 1920s concerning internment makes clear that a legislative basis for 
detention is required.223 Such legislation existed for those convicted of offences or those of 
‘unsound mind’, and some preventative detention is permitted under the Offences Against 
the State Act 1939. Children were often sent to industrial schools without a criminal conviction 
being recorded.224 Until the passing of the Criminal Justice Act 1984, police detention without 
charge was not lawful. Thus, for the entire period under consideration the right to liberty 
could only be breached in limited circumstances, grounded in underpinning legislation. 
Detention of women and girls in these institutions did not meet those constitutional 
requirements and thus the Commission concludes there were breaches of the right to 
liberty.225  
 
The relationship between coercion and admission is especially clear in the cases of women 
and girls returned to Irish institutions from Britain.226 Between 1931 and 1971, a State 
‘repatriation’ policy ensured that many women and girls who had left Ireland for British cities 
to give birth and arrange their child’s adoption227 were returned to institutions in their 
counties of origin.228 The underlying motivations were both economic and religious; to relieve 
British charities and local government of responsibility for these women and children, and to 
address a threat, perceived by Roman Catholic agencies that children would be raised in non-
Catholic families. In several cases, women and girls were compelled to travel late in 
pregnancy, risking their health, and that of their babies. The Commission has seen some 
evidence that women who were living unmarried with a man, who were disabled or who had 
friendships with men who were not White, were more likely to come to the attention of 
organisations involved in ‘repatriation’. Babies and older children were also repatriated. It is 
not known whether the mothers consented to leave Britain. The Commission has seen 
evidence of cases in which significant pressure was applied in convincing women to return. 
There is evidence that the authorities were aware that by going to Britain, women were 
deliberately avoiding Ireland’s punitive system for the control of single mothers.229 Although 
we cannot know the motives of every woman who left Ireland, the Commission observes that 
Ireland is unique in Europe in the significant numbers of pregnant women who fled their own 
country.  In returning them to Irish institutions, the Irish State was overriding their will. 
 

 
222 6.64. See also 16.49, 16.53, 16.82 for recognition of this principle in the 1920s and 30s. 
223 R (O’Connell) v Military Governor of Hare Park Camp [1924] 2 IR 104. 
224 3.09, ss 57, 58, Children Act 1908 Act 
225 See The State (McDonagh) v Frawley [1978] IR 131. 
226 See generally Chapter 7. 
227 A number of British cases are scattered across Chapter 8. 
228 For attempts to return them to their parents (and deter travel in the long term) see 7.46-7.47 This 
practice continued unofficially afterwards through arrangements via clergy and religious orders. 
229 5.109; 12.9 Single Irish mothers who travelled to Britain in later pregnancy, and were unable to find 
work, could not access mainstream state health and welfare services. However, in the 1940s, 50s and 
60s, a woman returned to Ireland could be detained in an Irish institution and deprived of an income 
for a longer time than if she had remained in Britain.  



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Breaches of the right to personal liberty occurred both on admission and during ongoing 
detention. The ongoing holding of women and girls and their treatment after admission, 
indicates that they were involuntarily detained. They were not at liberty to leave when they 
chose. Their length of stay was arbitrarily determined by local government or religious 
agencies by reference to criteria with no basis in law.230 Into the 1960s,231 two-year terms of 
residence232 (and sometimes longer terms)233 were frequently imposed on women and girls 
who were maintained by public authorities (3.3). With the knowledge of government,234 
institutions forbade mothers235 to leave without also taking their children, requiring them to 
make arrangements for care or adoption or to wait until arrangements were made for 
adoption, committal or boarding out.236 In practice, however, those who had no access to the 
social security system or familial support237 remained in the institutions under duress. In the 
earlier decades, a longer stay was considered necessary to ensure the woman’s ‘reform’, and 
some State officials and influential policy makers openly shared this view.238 The requirement 
that the woman remain with the child was not universally relaxed until the 1970s.239 
 
There is evidence that many people, including those in authority, understood that the 
institutions were places of detention.240 In Kilrush, detainees were only permitted to leave if 
their families came for them and the board gave permission.241 In 1924, the chair of the South 
Cork Board of Public Health and Home Assistance and Lord Mayor suggested that women 
should be prosecuted for escaping Bessborough.242 The Commission found evidence of 
priests, TDs and councillors writing letters petitioning for the release of individuals.243 Gardaí, 

 
230 This idea of reform was endorsed by the 1927 Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Indigent 
Poor; 4.44-4.45. This Commission agreed that a second pregnancy should lead to 2 years’ detention and 
that a woman should not be permitted to leave until the local government was satisfied that 
arrangements had been made for her child. 
231 5.98; 6.60-6.66. 
232 6% of women for whom the Commission has records stayed 700 days or longer in an institution; this 
rose to 20% for the three Sacred Heart homes. 17% of women in the 1940s and 20% of women in the 
1950s stayed 700 days or longer. Some women in county homes remained for many years; 10.19. 
233 Some women evidently stayed for decades e.g. 18.60. 
234 See 19.57-1960 on DLGPH policy in 1944/45, encouraging boarding out by 2 years of age, and noting 
that some children were remaining longer. This was also motivated by the desire to avoid 
overcrowding, and long-term institutionalisation of children; 20.66. See also Department of Health 
awareness in 1963 at 19.145. 
235 30.9. 
236 10.57, 10.65, 10. 81, 18.62 and 28.38 (attempted prosecution of women who left Bessborough without 
their children); 18.159.  
237 See recognition of this at Pelletstown in 1940; 13.178. See also DLGPH’s rejection of the Clare Board’s 
suggestion that women at Kilrush be allowed to leave Kilrush and take up employment while their 
children remained behind; 19.21; courts committing the children of mothers at Sean Ross to industrial 
school so that they could take up employment; 19.84. 
238 19.61; 6.64 for a later example. There is evidence that some influential figures saw detention as means 
of preventing further pregnancies. For example, Fr. Richard Devane SJ proposed ‘deprivation of liberty’ 
as an alternative to sterilisation; 9.52. 
239 12.105. 
240 Bethany Home was also used as a remand home. 
241 16.56.  
242 18.28. They left because their babies had died. See also 28.38; police notified of ‘absconders’. 
243 6.64 ; 19.112. 



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on another occasion, were investigating a girl’s complaint of forced adoption. They noted, on 
visiting, that she was due for ‘release’. The word ‘release’ suggests that the Gardaí considered 
that the woman was incarcerated.244 Frequent social and institutional references to those who 
had children outside of marriage as ‘second offenders’ and ‘persistent offenders’,245 and use 
of the term ‘rehabilitation’246 also suggest a social understanding that these institutions had a 
quasi-penal function.247 This was no mere label. In the earlier decades under examination, the 
distinction between first and second offenders often determined the type of institution to 
which a woman was sent.248 County managers and the Department of Health were involved 
in setting general policy around ‘second offenders’ (3.1). 
 
The involuntary nature of detention is further evidenced by ‘escapes’249 and responses to 
them. For instance, in 1924 when three women attempted to escape from Kilrush, they were 
arrested by Gardaí and returned.250 Regularly, those who escaped were ‘captured, brought 
back and punished.’251 Another woman brought back by Gardaí was punished by the nuns 
for running away by having her hair cut off.252 One witness testified that she saw a woman 
die while jumping out the window, trying to escape Bessborough.253 Some children born in 
the institutions also attempted to escape, sometimes directly citing abuse as the catalyst for 
their actions. Aspects of the institutional regime including locked doors and other physical 
infrastructure, denial of income (3.3), and imposition of a uniform (3.6) also served to deter 
escape.  
 
Where a person alleges unlawful detention, Art 40.3.2 of the Constitution provides for habeas 
corpus; a process whereby the High Court must examine the lawfulness of the detention. The 
Commission has seen no evidence that this process was ever used to release a woman 
detained in one of these institutions. The context in which these women and girls were 
detained made this, otherwise standard, legal challenge less likely.  
 
 

 
244 24.94. See also 9.102. 
245 4.59; 4.107; 6.49; 8.11; 9.71; 9.76; 9.88; 9.94; 9.111; 10.27; 10.48; 13.105; 13.59; 13.105; 18.44; 19.15; 21.7; 
21.37; 22.100; Confidential Committee 82, 161.  
246 9.75. 
247 In this respect it is irrelevant that some authorities may have understood that the institutions 
protected women; 4.47. The Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor 1927 originally 
recommended that ‘second offender’ should be a legal category, with boards of health having the 
power to detain such women. This never became law. Clann Report, 116. The terms may be traced back 
to the Report of the Viceregal Commission on the Poor Law in Ireland (Dublin: Thoms, 1906), which 
advocated (at pp. 42-44) that a mother’s apparent morality should determine both the likelihood of her 
detention and her right to reclaim one’s child. 
248 9.76; 10.12-10.14; 20.18. In the 1960s, Pelletstown prioritised the adoption of children of first-time 
mothers so that they could leave sooner; 6.65. Charitable agencies often referred poorer women to 
county homes; 10.14. 
249 8.22; 16.56; 19.197. 
250 See also threats to call the Gardaí; Confidential Committee, 56, 144. 
251 18.297. 
252 Confidential Committee, 43. 
253 18.327. 



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3.5 ADMISSIONS AND SEXUAL ABUSE 
 
Many women and girls placed in institutions were pregnant as a result of a sexual offence 
committed against them, including rape, statutory rape, incest or serial sexual abuse, while 
living at home or while fostered or ‘boarded out’. There is evidence that staff at these 
institutions knew that some pregnancies were the result of sexual offences.  
 
5,616 girls were under 18 when they came to an institution, representing 11.4% of the total 
admissions in the period under review. Some institutions had significantly higher rates of 
admission of under-18s: 23.4% of Dunboyne’s254 admissions were children. To the 
Commission’s knowledge, the youngest child admitted pregnant to an institution was just 11 
years old. When Ireland attained independence, the age of consent was 16.255 Therefore, any 
girl under the age of 16 who was pregnant on admission to an institution was the victim of a 
criminal offence. Any person working in or operating an institution who was aware of the 
pregnancy of a girl was under an obligation to report the offence to the Gardaí. A reporting 
obligation existed under the common law offence of misprision of felony which criminalised 
any person who concealed knowledge that a felony had been committed. The Criminal Law 
Amendment Act 1935 raised the age of consent to 17, further increasing the reporting 
responsibilities of institutions and their staff. Cases were rarely reported256 and, even where 
they were reported, Gardaí appeared reluctant to investigate. The consequence of failing to 
report such concerns was that child sex offenders were left free while their victims were 
detained.257  
 
The idea that the authorities were entirely indifferent to sexual offences against girls in the 
earlier part of the century does not withstand scrutiny. The Criminal Law Amendment Bill 
1929 sought to raise the age of consent to 18, but the Bill was withdrawn so as to allow further 
investigation into the question of sexual offences against children. This led to the 
establishment of the 1931 Carrigan Committee258 which heard evidence of extensive and 
widespread sexual offending,259 calls for increased punishment of offenders,260 and an 

 
254 Dunboyne operated from 1955-1991. 
255 Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, s 5. 
256 19.174; For examples of reporting see 18.64; 29.68; Confidential Committee p. 22, 27, 32. For examples 
of judicial action see 1.128 (failed action for seduction brought by father); 20.53, (successful prosecution 
for unlawful carnal knowledge).  
257 In re DG [1991] 1 IR 491is a striking case heard in the High Court in 1989. A girl was 15 when she 
became pregnant by a 23-year-old man. She was sent to what the court calls a ‘home and school for 
girls in rural parts’. Consideration was given to a rape prosecution, but this was not pursued. 
258 The Committee’s report was suppressed. See James M. Smith, "The Politics of Sexual Knowledge: The 
Origins of Ireland's Containment Culture and the Carrigan Report (1931)" Journal of the History of Sexuality 13, 
no. 2 (2004): 208-33. 
259 Committee on the Criminal Law Amendment Acts, Report of the Committee on the Criminal Law 
Amendment Acts (1880–1885) and Juvenile Prostitution (1931), National Archives of Ireland (NAI), 
Department of Justice (D/Jus) file S5998 (Carrigan Report) and Committee on the Criminal Law 
Amendment Acts, Minute Book, (NAI, D/Jus S5998) (Minute Book), testimony of Eoin O’Duffy, 25. 
260 Carrigan Report, 29–30; Minute Book, testimony of Rev PJ Roughneen, 65, testimony of District Judge 
Dermot Gleeson, 56, and testimony of Fr M Fitzpatrick, 33. 



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increased age of consent.261 The Commission did not encounter any evidence to suggest that 
women and girls pregnant through sexual violence received any special care in the 
institutions. On the contrary, in many cases, the violence experienced was exacerbated by the 
institutional regime.  
 
The legal framework of child protection inherited by the newly independent State was based 
on a series of Victorian and Edwardian statutes, many of which were consolidated in the 
Children Act 1908, which dominated Irish child protection law until the passage of the Child 
Care Act 1991. At its beginnings, child protection law was at least partially based on the idea 
that, while children who suffered abuse were increasingly seen as victims, they were also 
threats to the existing social order. This is clearly evidenced by parliamentary debates around 
the Acts. From the late nineteenth century onwards, children were removed from parental 
care for a number of different reasons, ranging from the commission of criminal offences 
against children by parents to abandonment or desertion of parental rights. These new 
measures were justified in order to remove responsibility from ‘drunken fathers and 
profligate mothers over children who have been saved from misery, degradation, and ruin’.262 
The Children Act 1908, expanded the State’s supervisory role in child protection but did so 
by placing significant reliance on criminalisation rather than any understanding of an 
overarching concept of welfare or best interests. This is made clear by the terms of section 58 
of the 1908 Act, which was one of the most important mechanisms by which children were 
removed from their parents. A child could be removed from parental care for begging, 
homelessness, destitution, parental drunkenness, living with or associating with a known 
thief or prostitute, or being the daughter of a man convicted under the Criminal Law 
Amendment Act 1885. As the courts’ powers expanded, the law focused more overtly on 
concepts of neglect, and school non-attendance became an important ground for child 
removal.263 However, the law continued to be applied in ways that othered affected children, 
with distinct impacts on poor and Traveller (5.3) children.  
 
 
3.6 INHUMAN AND DEGRADING TREATMENT 
 
The Commission has heard significant evidence of physical abuse and punishment and of 
systematic psychological or emotional abuse and punishment. Degrading conditions and ill-
treatment can, each in isolation, give rise to violations of the rights to bodily integrity and to 
the right not to be ill-treated. In combination and considered in the light of the vulnerabilities 
of women and girls detained in these institutions, the Commission’s findings suggest serious 
breaches of Ireland’s international and national legal obligations.264  

 
261 Carrigan Report 16–18, and Minute Book, testimony of Miss Ita Dodd representing the Irish Women 
Citizen’s and Local Government Association, 13, testimony of Mrs Margaret Gavan Duffy and Mrs Ita 
Brady, 59. 
262 HL Deb 06 February 1891, vol 350, cols 116–117, Lord Thring. 
263 See further, Sarah-Anne Buckley, The Cruelty Man (Manchester University Press, 2015). 
264 Ireland signed the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading 
Treatment or Punishment in 1992. The European Convention in Human Rights applied from 1953. 



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Ireland ratified the European Convention on Human Rights in 1953 and was, from then, 
bound by the Article 3 prohibition on torture, inhuman and degrading treatment or 
punishment. The Irish courts also recognised the unenumerated right to bodily integrity (in 
1965),265 and the right not to be subjected to torture, or inhuman or degrading treatment (in 
1976)266 under Article 40.3.1 of the Constitution. Thus, at least since the early 1950s, the State 
had concrete legal obligations to prohibit torture and other forms of ill-treatment. The 
Commission accepts that many people are living with the continuing effects of severe ill-
treatment today.  
 
It is also significant that, from the early 1970s, Ireland was an international advocate for the 
strengthening of the international ban on all forms of ill-treatment. Ireland co-sponsored 
numerous resolutions at the UN leading to the UN Declaration against Torture and other 
Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment in 1975.267 In 1971, Ireland took an inter-state petition 
against the United Kingdom to the European Commission on Human Rights alleging 
breaches of the European Convention, including of Article 3.268 
 
Material living conditions in most institutions under review were generally poor, inadequate, 
or basic, until at least the late 1960s. 269 The county homes, Kilrush and Tuam, had appalling 
physical conditions.270 Many institutions were overcrowded, until at least the early 1950s; 271 
witnesses continued to confirm horrific conditions in the 50s and 60s.272 Many institutions had 
inadequate heating and poor hygiene arrangements or inadequate sanitation.273 The 
Commission has seen evidence of local government refusal to invest in essential repairs, or in 
provision of amenities such as hot water, in the earlier decades under study, even when 
requested to do so by their religious management.274 Hygiene issues included insufficient 
nappy changes275 and toileting for babies,276 and inadequate sanitary provision for 
menstruating women and girls.277 There was a general lack of personal privacy. 278 These 
living conditions had the capacity to diminish the dignity of the women and girls (and the 

 
265 Ryan v Attorney General [1965] I.R. 345. 
266 The State (C) v Frawley [1976] I.R. 365. 
267 M Farrell, ‘Ireland and the United Nations Declaration against Torture: Principles and Politics in 
Action’ (2009-10) 4-5 Irish Yearbook of International Law 155-201. 
268 Ireland v United Kingdom (App no 5310/71) 25 January 1976. 
269 Dunboyne which opened in 1957 is an exception. The flatlets, which came in to use from the 70s on, 
also provided improved living conditions. 
270 6.83. See particularly Julia Devaney’s recorded testimony at 15.154. 
271 Bessborough, up to late 40s then ‘eased’, 96; Castlepollard, until early 50s, 108; Pelletstown – 13.212; 
late 1950s – para 24.85. 
272 Confidential Committee, 41; 19.159. 
273 19.53. 
274 15.16; 15.36; 16.24-16.28; 19.75. The authorities were clearly empowered to make these contributions 
under s. 65 Health Act, 1953. 
275 5.50; 29.110; Confidential Committee, 47. 
276 18.118; 20.42 
277 19.173; 20.141; 20.162; Confidential Committee, 52.  
278 216; 10.38. 



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babies, for whom the conditions were often wholly unsuitable). 279 The Commission accepts 
the Clann Project’s submission that the impact of physical abuse,280 under-nutrition and 
degrading treatment on vulnerable children who were at a formative stage of life should not 
be underestimated, especially because they had no power to escape. 281 
 
The objective physical conditions provide an important contextual picture. More important is 
how those living conditions were experienced by the women, girls, and children, particularly 
in the light of the coercive circumstances of their detention (3.4). The women and girls were 
vulnerable due to the circumstances of their institutionalisation, their separation from their 
community and family, their pregnancy, their fear of imminent childbirth and its 
consequences (3.8), their enforced dependency on the institutions for basic living necessities 
and for healthcare and in many cases, their age. Some had been sexually abused (3.5). Some 
had spent time in other institutions.282 Their vulnerability must have been heightened by the 
atmosphere of the institutions, which, testimony shows, was characterised by shame and fear.  
 
The Commission heard testimony, including from children born in the institutions,283 of the 
presence of various forms of physical abuse and punishment. Witnesses also describe a 
threatening atmosphere – they feared punishment.284 Women and girls were required to 
undertake demanding unpaid labour (both as work tasks and punishment)285 (3.3). This work 
was supervised at times through physical abuse (slaps or punches) and verbal abuse.286 The 
work comprised scrubbing floors, for long periods, 287 and other cleaning, including while 
heavily pregnant or in the days after giving birth. 288 Witnesses also attest to inadequate 
medical attention,289 (see also 3.8) which must have caused additional pain and suffering, 
especially for very young children. 
 
Women and girls were routinely, and deliberately, subjected to emotional abuse. This abuse 
was underpinned by structural shaming, imposed through such practices as deprivation of 
identity, being forbidden to talk about their life outside the institution, being required to wear 
a uniform290 and being assigned a new or ‘house’ name,291 upon entering the institution.292 On 

 
279 10.38. 
280 22.100. 
281 Clann Report, 112. 
282 8.17; 8.20. 
283 Confidential Committee, 46, 51 and 53. 
284 18.385; Confidential Committee, 45, 48 and 147. 
285 Confidential Committee, 41; 201.147. 
286 Confidential Committee p. 41 
287 18.924. 
288 Confidential Committee, 41. 
289 18.298-18.303. 
29018.373; 19.33, 19.182; 20.160 
291 This seems to have been a particular feature of life in Bessborough, Sean Ross and Castlepollard 
which were all run by the same order. 
292 18.5; 19.197. 



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arrival at an institution, one then-fifteen-year-old said that ‘her clothes were removed, her 
hair was cut, and she was told: "You’re here for your sins".’ 293  
 
As well as degrading living conditions and physical and emotional abuse, witnesses also 
recount the anguish of having to relinquish babies for adoption,294 and testify to the long term 
psychological and physical consequences of institutionalisation.295 In many cases, emotional 
and physical abuse broke resistance to the adoption of their children; today the effect of 
making a victim act against his or her will is considered a hallmark of degrading treatment.296 
 
The Commission has heard evidence that living conditions in the institutions improved in the 
1960s and especially from the 1970s onwards. In large part, however, this was in response to 
women’s and families’ increasing refusal to use the institutions, in favour of less punitive 
alternatives.297 That mass refusal is, in itself, evidence that conditions in the institutions were 
widely known to be intolerable. 

 
 
3.7 DEATHS AND BURIALS 
 
The Confidential Committee heard evidence of deaths attributed to neglect or abuse, 
including inadequate medical care, in the institutions.298 In relation to the 18 institutions 
within the Commission’s mandate, for which records were available, approximately 9,000 
children (amounting to 15% of the children who were in the institutions) and 200 women died. 
The very high mortality rates were known to local and national authorities at the time and 
were recorded in official publications.299 Some of the highest mortality rates are recorded in 
the decade after 1934, when the Registration of Maternity Homes Act was introduced (3.1). 
They were in excess of infant mortality in the general population and non-institutional 
contexts until the 1970s,300 and in some instances until the 1980s.301 The State failed to properly 
regulate those institutions or enforce existing laws, to prevent foreseeable deaths to the extent 
possible (3.1). As such, in many cases, the State violated both the constitutional and 
international human right to life of those who died.  
 
The Commission notes that the State’s attitude to infant mortality in institutions contrasts 
sharply with its attitude to infanticide. Women and girls found guilty of concealment of birth 
or infanticide were often sent to religious institutions by the courts, including institutions run 
by congregations featured in this Report. When an infant was suspected to have been killed 

 
293 Confidential Committee, .16; See also 19.198. 
294 32.164 on the experience of signing the adoption forms as traumatic. 
295 See e.g. Confidential Committee, 46 (fear of enclosed spaces) and 152 (eating disorder); 13.372 (panic 
attacks). 
296 Jalloh v Germany (2007) 44 EHRR 32 
297 9.125; 12.78. 
298 Confidential Committee 48. 
299 18.112. 
300 33.25. 
301 Chapter 33A, 11. 



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by their mother, the State often acted through the criminal justice system. If the same infant 
died in an institution, it generally did not.302 Both responses, however, speak to a refusal to 
address the costs of ongoing stigmatisation of non-marital pregnancy, and to an 
overwhelmingly punitive attitude to single mothers and their children. 
 
Several witnesses at the Confidential Committee raised concerns about death records. Some 
believed that infant deaths were falsified so that children could be adopted illegally; a concern 
also raised in a  2012 HSE draft briefing paper.303 The Committee also encountered cases 
where individuals had contacted a natural mother who they had previously been informed 
was dead.304 The issue of known discrepancies between recollections and records reflects some 
of the witness testimony gathered by the Clann Project.305 The Commission is unable to satisfy 
itself that all death records for infants in these institutions can be verified. The Commission is 
precluded under its Terms of Reference from examining individual cases. Nevertheless, the 
Commission concludes that the concerns and allegations of survivors and affected people 
demonstrate the need for independent forensic examination of burial sites, immediate 
survivor access to all relevant records, and a highly publicised DNA matching service. These 
would enable many affected people to verify their identity and their connection to deceased 
and surviving family members, to determine what became of missing relatives and, where 
desired, to request return of remains.  
 
Concerns about death records are compounded by a lack of comprehensive information 
regarding burial practices, procedures and locations. Some witnesses at the Confidential 
Committee expressed very limited knowledge regarding the burial of their loved ones.306 
Some women have not been able to access information about the burial of their child who 
died in an institution.307 At least one was deliberately misled, which was unforgivable, and 
must have compounded the family’s sense of anguish around the circumstances of 
institutional neglect leading to the child’s death. This experience is reflected in the witness 
testimony gathered by the Clann Report.308 The Commission has not been able to find burial 
records for the majority of the children who died in the institutions under investigation, 
whether from specific institutions or from the General Register Office. The failure to maintain 
effective death and burial records breaches the Burial (Ireland) Act 1868, Public Health 
(Ireland) Act 1878, Births and Deaths Registration (Ireland) Act 1880 and the Registration of 

 
302 For examples of the small number of inquests that were held see 13.177; 16.71; 20.24; 21.148; 21.150; 
21.153; 21.154; 28.43; 30.34. These are often examples of accidental death, or death where the child’s 
mother was arguably suspected of involvement. For an example of a sworn inquiry into a woman’s 
death see 19.29. For deaths investigated by Gardaí see 21.147; 22.90; 22.100. 
303 Confidential Committee, 51; 77;91; 97; 172, Conall ó Fátharta ‘Government already knew of baby 
deaths’ Irish Examiner June 3, 2015 http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/special-investigation-
government-already-knew-of-baby-deaths334260.html 
304 Confidential Committee, 182. 
305 Clann Report, 1.175. 
306 Confidential Committee, 72;153; 171. 
307 Confidential Committee, 68; 72. 
308 Clann Report, 1.173. 



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Maternity Homes Act 1934. The Commission remains convinced that there are people who 
have further information, but they have not come forward.309  
 
There is very little information for St Gerard’s in Dublin,310 there are no General Registration 
Office (GRO) records for the Regina Coeli Hostel,311 and other institutions have GRO records 
but a number of deaths remain unaccounted for: Dublin Union (104 deaths),312 Tuam (6 
deaths),313 Bessborough (11 deaths),314 Sean Ross (2 deaths),315 Castlepollard (17 deaths),316 
Dunboyne (5 deaths),317 Bethany (6 deaths),318 Denny (8 deaths),319 Cork County Hospital 
(33),320 Stranorlar (4 deaths),321 and Thomastown (8 deaths).322  
 
In the absence of clear information regarding appropriate burials, it appears likely that 
women’s and children’s dignity in death was violated by the manner of their burials. There is 
no information on burial whereabouts or records for Kilrush, Miss Carr’s Flatlets, The Castle, 
St. Gerards, Cork County Home or Stranorlar. Burial records were destroyed regarding 
Thomastown. The Commission did not investigate the burial arrangements at Regina Coeli as 
the children died in many different locations. In the Dublin Union/St Patrick’s/Pelletstown 
institution, 513 burial whereabouts remain unaccounted for.323 The burial location of children 
formerly resident at Denny House is only partially known.324 The Commission was advised 
by Good Shepherd Sisters that infants from Dunboyne were buried in a local government 
graveyard,325 but obtained no further information. Bethany Home burials identified by 
researchers have not been incorporated within official records.326 
 
The Commission has not been able to establish where the majority of the Bessborough 
children are buried. No register of burials was kept at Tuam or Sean Ross Abbey. Both sites 
have been subjected to forensic examination on behalf of the Commission. The only way in 

 
309 38.1. 
310 Very little is known about St. Gerard’s because the Commission was unable to access its institutional 
records; 27.2 – 27.3. The Commission reports that has not been possible to extract St. Gerard’s files from 
St. Patrick’s Guild files, of which they are a part. These were transferred to the Child and Family Agency 
(Tusla) in May 2016 but were not “fully processed” at the time of the Commission’s investigation. The 
Commission’s resources were not spent on processing files held by Tusla.  
311 Chapter 21A, 8. 
312 Chapter 13A, 35. 
313 15.70. 
314 18.26-27, 41. 
315 Chapter 19A, 30. 
316 Chapter 20A, 27. 
317 Chapter 24A, 27. 
318 Chapter 22A, 25. 
319 Chapter 23A, 16. 
320 28.13. 
321 Chapter 29A. 
322 Chapter 30A, 12. 
323 Chapter 13A, 34. 
324 Chapter 23A, 16; 23.94. 
325 24.188. 
326 Derek Leinster made the Commission aware of a set of records relating to the Nicholls Undertakers 
in Dublin City, which catered for many Protestant burials. 



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which the nature and extent of burials can be established in each site is by excavation of the 
properties as the records seen by the Commission cannot fully establish the extent, nature or 
location of all those who died in the institutions. Regarding Tuam, the Commission 
appreciates that the government is trying to establish an agency to deal with the matter. The 
Commission understands the rights of family members to know more. The Government may 
wish to take a view on those exhumations necessary in the interests of survivors and affected 
families.  
 
The Commission recognises that the identification and memorialisation of children who died 
in the institutions has often depended on voluntary efforts. Examples include the work of 
Catherine Corless at Tuam and Bethany Home survivors and affected people at Mount Jerome 
Cemetery.  
 
In recognising the distinct cultural importance of funerals and mourning for the Traveller 
Community (5.3), the Commission highlights with disappointment the responses of relevant 
religious organisations regarding recognition of mass graves and the identification and 
location of final resting places of those who died within the institutions. We recognise the 
trauma which this has caused and understand that it deepens the pain of forced 
institutionalisation for many Traveller women and children. The Commission also notes that 
known mass graves and burial sites at former institutions remain unmarked, inappropriately 
recorded, and inaccessible. The Commission recommends that access be granted for those 
who wish to visit the graves as a matter of urgency.  
 
The Commission further notes the common practice, evidenced in records seen by the 
Commission, of using infants’ remains, including stillborn infants’ remains, for teaching and 
research purposes,327 at third level institutions. Violations of the rights to dignity in death and 
private and family life arise where these remains were removed to a university without 
allowing adequate time for a relative to claim the body, or they were retained without parental 
consent. Even where remains were eventually buried,328 their retention over decades raises 
serious concerns. The Commission notes that the Anatomy Act 1832 applied to the remains of 
the infants born alive and required ‘decent’ burial in a coffin or shell, in consecrated ground, 
within six weeks of the removal of the remains for anatomical examination. The state, through 
its Inspectors of Anatomy and otherwise, was responsible for ensuring compliance with the 
Act. Further violations may arise where the university did not record sufficient identifying 
details to enable relatives to know the infants’ whereabouts and fate.329  
 
 
  

 
327 Fifth Interim Report para 7.13 
328 38.29  
329 See, for example retention of “wet remains” at Galway. Although available records strongly suggest 
that these are unlikely to be those of children taken from Tuam, the absence of appropriate records has 
understandably contributed to relatives’ concerns; 38.27   



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3.8 OBSTETRIC VIOLENCE 
 
Several witnesses who gave birth while resident in the institutions testified that they 
experienced neglect, physical abuse330 or degrading treatment during childbirth. Women 
associated these experiences with all decades under examination, and with both religious and 
‘lay’ personnel. Especially in earlier decades, some institutions had very poor facilities for 
birth, and several were located far from a major maternity hospital.331 The wisdom of allowing 
births to take place in the institutions was being questioned even in the 1980s, when conditions 
in institutions had otherwise improved.332 Serious abuses were reported even where medical 
facilities were of good quality and trained staff were available.333  
 
Single mothers experienced poor treatment in childbirth as a continuation and compounding 
of other oppressive experiences during pregnancy. The Confidential Committee heard from 
witnesses who understood that these abuses were punishments for their pregnancies, or for 
their sins.334 Some witnesses associated abuses during childbirth with long-term physical and 
mental health problems.335 Today, we would acknowledge that many of these women 
experienced obstetric violence.  
 
Neglect included denial of, or delay in providing, appropriate medical care, including pain 
relief,336 before, during and after labour.337 It also included refusal to relieve women and girls 
of physical work in late pregnancy (3.3).338 These experiences are particularly troubling given 
that single mothers were known, at various times, to be at heightened risk of poor health 
outcomes.339 Into the 1960s, poorer or disabled340 women and girls and those pregnant for a 
second or subsequent time were more likely to give birth in the county homes,341 where risks 
related to unsanitary conditions and inadequate staffing were more common.  
 

 
330 19.207; Confidential Committee 68. 
331 19.71-19.73. 
332 18.210 – 18.211. 
333 6.25-6.26. 
334 Confidential Committee 69, 82; 19.176; 19.198. 
335 Confidential Committee 81. 
336 19.197; 20.160; Confidential Committee, 57. Pethidine and ‘gas and air’ were available to mothers in 
Irish maternity hospitals for the management of difficult labours from the 1940s onwards; Harding 
Clark, Surgical Symphysiotomy Ex Gratia Payment Report 
https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/544fc6-the-surgical-symphysiotomy-ex-gratia-payment-
scheme-report/ 168. Issues around pain relief may have been related to medical officers’ willingness to 
facilitate the births. 
337 13.458; 18.298 18.314; 19.198; Confidential Committee 67; 68; 71; 78; 81; 84.  
338 20.42; 20.160; Confidential Committee 57; 71; 81. 
339 5.18. 
340 10.15. 
341 10.10. 

https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/544fc6-the-surgical-symphysiotomy-ex-gratia-payment-scheme-report/
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Physical abuse included use of restraints during labour342 and medical examination343 or 
intervention without informed consent.344 All of these can violate the constitutional right to 
bodily integrity.345 Some witnesses report being subjected to treatment that they did not 
understand,346 without any explanation. Women reported limited antenatal instruction,347 and 
poor sex education,348 even later in the period under investigation. Although the Rotunda and 
Holles Street began antenatal clinics in the 1930s, in 1970 the Master of Holles Street suggested 
that the stigma of single motherhood was still a barrier to accessing healthcare.349 
 
Women described multiple omissions or harms in the course of one birth, including in 
institutions which had well trained medical staff. For example, the Commission heard from 
one witness who developed an abscess at Bessborough after injection with a dirty needle. The 
abscess was lanced without her consent. When she went into labour, she was left alone for 72 
hours. She and her baby were denied antibiotics. The baby subsequently died of 
septicaemia.350 
 
Many mothers were teenagers or children pregnant for the first time,351 and it should have 
been obvious that extra care was needed. The impact of non-consensual medical intervention 
was especially severe because these women and girls had very little reproductive autonomy 
to begin with. For most of the period under study, women could not effectively access 
contraception352 or abortion353 in Ireland (2.1).354 Some women and girls sent to the institutions 
had been raped (3.4). Others had attempted to manage their pregnancies without resort to an 
institution but had been prevented from doing so (3.4).  
 
Degrading treatment included verbal abuse, sometimes in sexualised355 terms. Verbal abuse 
by medical staff and others in authority was especially damaging, precisely because women 
and girls were very vulnerable, frightened, sometimes in poor mental health, often in severe 

 
342 19.176, 19.207. 
343 19.191; 20.160. Women were often examined for syphilis or other sexually transmissible diseases as 
standard. This was often experienced as highly stigmatising. See 19.29 in which a single mother was 
refused admission to a maternity hospital because she was assumed to have venereal disease. She 
subsequently died of sepsis. She did not have venereal disease. 
344 18.300.  Patient consent was recognised as a legal requirement, at least in respect of ‘dangerous’ 
operations in Ireland from at least 1954; Daniels v. Heskin [1954] IR 73, 80 but cf judgment of Kingsmill 
Moore J.  
345 Ryan v Attorney General [1965] I.R. 345. 
346 Confidential Committee 71; 72; 74; 80-81; 18.299. 
347 12.25; 18.176; 18.318; 18.345; 19.176; Confidential Committee 63. 
348 9.37 -9.40; 13.290, referring to poor knowledge among Dublin women in 1984. 
349 12.34-12.35. 
350 18.300 – 18.304. 
351 18.314; Confidential Committee 68; 78; 81. 
352 The contraceptive pill was available in Ireland from 1962 but could not legally be prescribed as such 
until 1979. In practice, effective contraceptive access was dependent on marital status, religious 
denomination, age, wealth and mobility for all of the period under examination. 
353 For discussion of women who attempted to access an illegal abortion before admission to an 
institution see 18.185; 19.148; 21.23; 21.28. 
354 9.31-9.35. 
355 Confidential Committee 69-70; 71; 79; 80; 81; 18.299. 



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pain,356 and under the effective control of those who shouted at, shamed357 or belittled them.358 
Some witnesses who gave birth in external maternity hospitals reported hostile treatment 
from staff as well as from other patients and visitors, into the 1980s.359 The Commission has 
seen some evidence of hospitals refusing to admit single mothers, who were sent to 
institutions instead.360 
 
 
3.9 VACCINE AND MILK TRIALS 
 
The Commission identified thirteen vaccine trials conducted on children, including seven 
taking place in institutions under investigation (1934-1973).361 There was another suspected 
but unconfirmed trial in 1965.362 Trials of infant milk were also conducted on children in 
Bessborough and Pelletstown.363 There are gaps in the records available. This hinders a 
comprehensive assessment of the extent of the trials that took place, the number of children 
involved, and the potential harms which may have been suffered.  
 
Vaccine trials involved products of leading international pharmaceutical companies, 
including Wellcome and Glaxo laboratories which today are part of GlaxoSmithKline.364 As 
well as institutions’ medical officers, they involved several leading Irish medical academics 
and senior public health officials, some of whom were working in Irish universities, including 
Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin. In some cases, potential benefits were 
reported for lead investigators or their institutions as a result of their involvement in the trials, 
for example, laboratory equipment (or assistance towards purchasing this), or financial sums 
were provided to some researchers/institutions.365  

 
356 Confidential Committee 78; 80. 
357 Confidential Committee 70; 74; 18.314. 
358 Confidential Committee 72; 74. 
359 12.33; 18.316; 18.329. 
360 3.26; 6.22; 8.20; 8.5; 9.101. The three Dublin hospitals admitted single women. However, until 1954 
the Rotunda Hospital requested marriage certificates for women when they enrolled for antenatal care; 
6.20. In 1970 they reported to the Department of Health that single women were encouraged to wear 
wedding rings and receive male visitors; 12.33.  
361 34.17. These were as follows: 1935: Denis F Hanely, Wellcome’s APT anti diphtheria vaccine Dublin 
(Trial A); 1960/61: Professor Patrick Meenan and Dr Irene Hillery, Wellcome’s ‘Quadrivax’ vaccine 
(Trial B); 1964:Professor Meenan and Dr Hillery, Wellcome ‘Wellcovax’ Measles Vaccine Sean Ross, 
Roscrea (Trial C); 1964.1965 Professor Meenan and Dr Hillery, Glaxo Laboratories ‘Mevillin-L’ measles 
vaccine Dublin (Trial D); 1965: Professor Meenan and Dr Hillery, Glaxo Laboratories, ‘Quintuple’ 5 in 
1 vaccine (Trial E); 1968: Dr Victoria Coffey, Glaxo Laboratories measles vaccine St Patrick’s (Trial F); 
1974: Professor Meenan, Dr Hillery and Dr Margaret Dunleavy, Wellcome Diptheria, Tetanus and 
Pertusis (DTP) Trial Dublin (Trial G). 
362 34.17 an unconfirmed trial for an oral polio vaccine in St Patrick’s Navan Road (Pelletstown) in 1965. 
See 34.31. 
363 34.164. 
364 GlaxoSmithKline published details of the vaccine trials in September 2021; 
https://www.gsk.com/en-gb/locations/ireland/gsk-mother-and-baby-home-information-service/. 
The company has not contributed to the state redress scheme.  
365 34.172, 34.120, 34.129. 



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The permissions and licences needed to conduct such trials were not always in place, with 
some trials conducted in breach of licences.366 This may suggest a failure on the State’s part to 
adequately monitor or enforce the applicable regulatory framework.367 
 
Consent was often not obtained from parents/guardians of children for these trials.368 It is 
also not clear if all parents/guardians were made aware that their children were part of trials. 
The importance of voluntary consent in medical treatment/research has been enshrined in 
medical ethics since the Nuremberg code in the 1940s.369 Moreover, there is evidence that 
parental consent was emphasised for medical interventions in other Irish contexts as early as 
the 1930s. For example, under an anti-diphtheria immunisation programme for Dublin 
children operating in 1935, health authorities required consent of parents for children treated 
in municipal health clinics and city schools.370 It was reported that no child was immunised 
without a written consent form.371  
 
The extent of adverse reactions experienced by children from these trials, or other potential 
physical or psychological harms which may have resulted from their involvement in the trials 
is difficult to determine, due to several factors, including the lack of comprehensive records 
in many cases, and difficulties around the subsequent identification of people who were 
subjected to the trials. Nonetheless, evidence available shows some children suffered adverse 
reactions to products trialled, including infants recorded as having ‘slight temperature and 
rash’ 14 days after vaccination,372 moderate reactions,373 and some severe reactions with some 
children hospitalised in one case.374 Several individuals’ participation has been confirmed; 
however, there is no current process to inform them of their participation or to provide them 
with their records. The Government should take steps to provide these individuals with 
unredacted and unmediated access to their records. 
 
Aside from potential risks such children were exposed to by their involvement in trials of 
unapproved products, being part of a trial often comes with other burdens, including the need 
to provide e.g., blood samples or rectal temperatures over the period of the trial.375 These 
requirements placed additional burdens on children, and could also arguably be viewed as 
potential harms suffered. Very few people involved in these trials as children have had their 
participation confirmed by the State, and many records have now been returned to the 

 
366 34.153. 
367 Therapeutic Substances Act, 1932. 
368 34.16. 
369 34.11. 
370 34.38. 
371 34.38. 
372 34.96. 
373 34.157; moderate reaction was defined as ‘baby so upset as to require extra attention or nursing’; 
34.175 and 34.185, severe reactions to experimental milk feeds. 
374 34.137 this referred to cases in 1973 in Dublin DTP trials. 
375 34.106; 34.111; 34.83; 34.104. 



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relevant archives. The Commission urges the Oireachtas, and GlaxoSmithKline, to ensure 
affected people’s unmediated access to these records. 
 
  



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4. FAMILY SEPARATION376 
 
The Commission’s Terms of Reference exclude a full consideration of the many individuals 
and institutions involved in arranging adoptions during the period under examination.377 
However, as with the governance of the institutions (3.1), the State delegated much 
responsibility for administering legalised family separation – including the vetting of 
prospective adopters – to religious organisations including adoption societies.378 Priests, nuns, 
solicitors379 and doctors all facilitated private adoptions.380 In principle, from 1952 onwards, 
adoptions were regulated by the State,381 but oversight by the Adoption Board was limited 
until well into the 1970s.382  
 
Until the 1970s, church organisations did not encourage single motherhood383 and the State 
offered no real alternative to adoption or fostering following birth outside of marriage.384 The 
marital family occupied a privileged position in constitutional law, with children raised by 
single mothers often stigmatised within society. Nonetheless, single mothers and their 
children had clear rights to private and family life. As early as 1946, Gavan Duffy P. spoke of 
these family rights as ‘authentic claims of nature’, recognised at common law.385 In 1966386 
and again in 1978387 the Supreme Court recognised the single mother’s right to protect and 
care for, and have custody of her child under Article 40.3 of the Constitution. This right was 
unenforceable in practice. It was violated when women were permanently separated from 
their children without their consent and without any opportunity to restore their relationship. 
Extraordinarily high levels of family separation through formal and informal adoption and 
fostering were considered justified, not merely because single mothers were often vulnerable 
or poor, but because they were considered unfit parents by default.388 This policy effectively 
assumed that the rights of single mothers were generally in conflict with those of their 
children – so that a child’s rights and best interests were better protected by being separated 
from their natural mother and, wherever possible, being placed with a married adoptive 

 
376 For more discussion of this phrase see (8.3) 
377 32.7. However, we note that several institutions had strong connections to adoption agencies. For 
example, St. Patrick’s Guild, run by the Sisters of Charity, ran St. Gerard’s ‘home’. 
378 32.258. Most were Catholic. PACT – established in 1952 by the Church of Ireland Moral Welfare 
Society - was the main Protestant Adoption Society. Some received local government funding. Some 
ran or were affiliated with crisis pregnancy services. 
379  13.196. 
380 32.295. 
381 32.257. 
382 32.255. 
383 12.61. 
384 In 1963, the Department of Health argued that the best outcome of entry into a mother and baby 
home was that the woman should leave with her child; 19.145. See also 13.288. In 1970, the Kennedy 
Report recommended an emphasis on keeping mother and child together; 12.36.  
385 Re M [1946] I.R. 334. Pre-independence see e.g. In Re: O’Hara [1900] 2 IR 232. 
386 Nicolaou v. An Bord Uchtála (1966) IR 567. 
387 G v. An Bord Uchtála [1980] IR 32, 52 (decided 1978). 
388 3.35 (contrasting ‘innocent’ children with their mothers). See e.g. 5.116 on state rejection of single 
motherhood as abnormal and further e.g. 5.89, 9.48, 9.58. 



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family. The policy of family separation also meant that siblings were frequently separated 
from one another. 
 
For much of the period under study, political commentary, religious teaching and media 
coverage presented the institutionalisation of single mothers as a consequence of parental 
rejection. In this respect, single mothers were sometimes said to be ‘more sinned against than 
sinning’.389 Religious orders, in particular, were praised for engaging with women and girls 
abandoned by their own families,390 and many understood their work in those terms.391 
However, evidence seen by the Commission clearly demonstrates that the State and religious 
organisations engaged in harmful practices of forced family separation, with serious lifelong 
consequences for many women and their children. Even after the institutions had closed or 
moved to less overtly degrading regimes, forced separation remained a common feature of 
State responses to single parents (2.3).392  
 
 
4.1 HARMS OF FAMILY SEPARATION 
 
The Commission recognises that the culture of family separation that operated in the 
institutions had a lasting negative impact and controlled elements of many women’s later 
lives. It interfered with many mothers’ personal development and inhibited their right to 
develop relationships.393 The Commission heard from witnesses who were deeply distressed 
by the fact that they had assented to their children’s adoptions.394 One witness spoke of a 
subsequent child’s ill health as ‘retribution’ for her having given up her first baby.395 Some 
witnesses told the Commission that they made a deliberate choice not to have more children 
because of their experiences.396  
 
Family separation was not confined to formal legal separation; it was equally apparent in the 
institutions’ day-to-day operations. For most of the period under examination,397 Regina Coeli 
was the only institution examined to enable mothers to keep their babies with them, and then 
in very poor conditions and only if they could pay.398 There is evidence that those in authority 
actively deterred bonding between mother and baby after birth.399 Mothers were often 
prevented from breastfeeding or holding their new-born babies.400 There was also limited 

 
389 9.51; 9.96; 9.102; 17.4; 20.43. The phrase is from Shakespeare, King Lear. 
390 12.23; 19.33. 
391 9.110; 12.23; 18.221. 
392 24.149. 
393 X v Iceland, app no 6825/74 (Commission), 18 May 1976 (Article 8 ECHR); Marckx v Belgium, app 
no 6833/74, 13 June 1979 (Article 8 ECHR). 
394 Confidential Committee, 90, 104. 
395 Confidential Committee, 154. 
396 Confidential Committee, 37; 155, 158. 
397 12.106. By the 1980s, Bessborough allowed some women to keep their babies. 
398 21.71; 21.99-100. The Legion of Mary would apply for committal of children to industrial school. 
399 19.177, 19.207. 
400 Confidential Committee, 67. 



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scope for interaction as the children grew older: Children stayed in the institutions for various 
time periods prior to adoption or boarding out, but mothers were not given free access to 
them, even though they lived in the same institution.401 Several witnesses gave evidence of 
attempting see their child and of being punished when caught doing so.402 Some mothers who 
were prevented from bonding with their babies gave evidence of the negative impact this had 
on their relationships with their subsequent children.403 Many women’s babies died in the 
institutions and these losses had life-long effects (3.7). 
 
The system of family separation also negatively affected children. The Commission rejects any 
contention that the option of legal adoption was always a better alternative for children. In 
particular, it recognises that many children whose families were able to resist or avoid coerced 
adoption benefitted, not only from their families’ care, but from the preservation of 
constitutional rights which the law then in force denied to many adopted people. Some of 
those who came to the Commission experienced trauma as a result of family separation, even 
where their adoptive parents provided secure, happy homes. Prior to 1953, the fate of a child 
born to an single mother was at the mercy of her financial means404 and the policy of the local 
authority taking responsibility for them405 (3.2). The Commission heard distressing and 
cogent evidence from adults boarded out, fostered406 and adopted as children, who were 
neglected407 or abused408 in the households and families that received them 409 after they left 
their first institution.410 Foster parents benefited from local authority maintenance,411 and 
eventually from the child’s labour power412 and earning capacity.413 These children were often 
deprived of an education, despite government policy.414 Older ‘boarded out’ children were 
often ‘hired’ out by local authorities as farm labourers and servants, for very poor pay or 
payment in kind. The Commission has seen evidence that children boarded out from both 
Catholic and Protestant institutions experienced similarly damaging exploitation and abuse. 
 
For many children, early life in an institution was the start of a longer experience of 
institutionalisation. Some local authorities preferred industrial school placements415 to 
boarding out. Those who were not adopted or boarded out often spent their childhood in 
county ‘homes’, other children’s residential institutions, and abusive industrial schools.416 

 
401 10.74; 18.377; Confidential Committee, 47. 
402 Confidential Committee, 47. 
403 Confidential Committee, 67. 
404 11.143. 
405 11.43.  
406 Archival evidence related to boarded out children is scant;11.141; 11.142. 
407 11.64-11.97. 
408 11.86-11.92, Confidential Committee 109. 
409 11.45-11.46; Confidential Committee, 106,108, 111 125, 130, 133. 
410 11.43.  
411 11.80-8. The money was often not spent on the child. 
412 11.92-11.98. 
413 11.25-11.40; 11.65-11.69. 
414 11.110. 
415 11.52. 
416 12.276. 



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Some were then transferred to other institutions, including Magdalen laundries or psychiatric 
hospitals, as adults.  
 
These issues were all known to state authorities. In particular, local government officials 
habitually evaded their statutory placement417 and inspection duties418 in respect of children 
boarded out419 or placed at nurse.420 Some actively refused to co-operate with national 
inspectors.421 Once adoption was legalised, unsuitable care arrangements persisted, though 
they were more often short-term, as a precursor to adoption. Even following reform of the 
adoption law in 1953, the processes for vetting or evaluating prospective adopters422 were 
entirely inadequate, and children were placed at foreseeable risk of grave harm. Where abuses 
were perpetrated in private households, the State was responsible for failing to take the 
necessary steps to ensure that a child was not put in foreseeable danger. 
 
Many witnesses gave evidence to the Committee of their efforts to trace their natural parents 
or children later in life and spoke of the obstacles encountered in doing so. The Commission 
is grateful for the submissions of advocacy organisations, including the Adoption Rights 
Alliance, on this matter. The Commission heard evidence of instances where the names of 
children and natural mothers were changed on adoption papers and birth certificates.423 Many 
witnesses who had been adopted from the institutions as children testified that they were 
falsely told that their natural mothers were deceased,424 and there were several reports of 
mothers being led to believe that their children had died when this was not the case.425 Several 
witnesses adopted from institutions testified that their families did not tell them they were 
adopted, with many finding out by chance later in life.426  
 
Many witnesses regarded access to birth information and records as essential to upholding 
their sense of identity.427 The Commission heard evidence of the harm caused to adopted 
people where they were unable to trace their natural parents, including psychological harm428 
and issues pertaining to medical history.429 Some adopted witnesses spoke of a lost 

 
417 Children Acts 1908 and 1934 (at nurse). 
418 Children Act, 1908; 11.49-11.58. 
419 County Boards of Health (Assistance) Order 1924; s. 48 Public Assistance Act, 1939; 55(3) Health Act, 
1953 (boarding out). 
420 11.113-11.137. Unlike ‘boarding out’, being placed ‘at nurse’ was a private arrangement, though in 
theory subject to government inspection. A mother would choose the woman or private nursing home 
herself or approach, the NSPCC, or a charity such as the CRPSI (11.133-11.134) to do so. Bethany Home 
also placed children at nurse. Charities often did not effectively vet carers (11.117) and some carers 
were not registered with the local authority. Nursed-out children were often sent to industrial schools 
after a few years;11.125. 
421 11.52-11.53. 
422 See 32.212-32.255 onwards for Darling’s assessment of the system in the 1970s. 
423 Confidential Committee, 96, 99, 176. 
424 Confidential Committee, 89-90, 127, 128, 129, 171, 173, 198. 
425 Confidential Committee, 91, 130. 
426 Confidential Committee, 91, 92, 112, 132, 133. 
427 Confidential Committee, 133, 179, 182. 
428 Confidential Committee, 133. 
429 Confidential Committee, 93, 171. 



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opportunity to meet family members who died while they were trying to access the necessary 
records. Adopted people who were successful in gaining access to their records often found 
they were incomplete,430 inaccurate,431 or had some information redacted or erased.432 
Witnesses also testified to difficulties in accessing records that would disclose the fate of 
deceased family members (3.7). Denial of access to that information amounts to a continuing 
violation of the right to private and family life.433 The Commission notes the valid argument 
made in submissions by the Clann Project that, in some circumstances, the removal of children 
from incarcerated (3.4) parents, and the subsequent denial of all information about that child’s 
fate, may amount to enforced disappearance.434 Witnesses associated denial of information 
with religious-run institutions and, more recently, with Tusla. The Commission is of the view 
that barriers experienced in accessing personal data raise serious questions of compliance 
with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In particular, blanket redaction of 
mixed personal data is incompatible with the Regulation. Details of an adopted person’s name 
at birth, or those of their natural parents, for example, should not be withheld simply because 
this information may identify another person.435 Ongoing unequal treatment of adopted 
people by comparison to other adults perpetuates the original harms of forced separation, and 
continues cultures of concealment (2.1) which are antithetical to the right to private life. 
 
The right to identity is recognised in the Irish Constitution,436 the ECHR437 and the UN 
Convention on the Rights of the Child. Adopted people have a right to unmediated access to 
their birth certificates and other personal records. GDPR-compliant legislation facilitating 
access to publicly available birth certificates, birth information, and records for adopted 
people and people placed in informal care arrangements should be introduced immediately.  

 
 
4.2 DOMESTIC ADOPTION 
 
Until 1953, Ireland had no adoption legislation. The word ‘adoption’ was used before 1952 to 
refer to ‘boarding out’ or fostering438 but the practice was not legally regulated.439 The Public 
Assistance authorities were allowed to board out children under the Public Assistance Act 

 
430 Confidential Committee, 171, 181. 
431 Confidential Committee, 182. 
432 Confidential Committee, 171, 173, 188. 
433 Jovanovic v Serbia (2015) 61 EHRR 3. 
434 Clann Report 110. 
435 Nowak v Data Protection Commissioner of Ireland (Case C-434/16, 20 December 2017). Deceased 
people have no rights under GDPR. In the limited cases where a living natural mother has privacy 
concerns around release of this information, her rights do not trump those of her adult child. IO’T v. B 
[1998] 2 IR 321 does not address the question of publicly available birth certificates. 
436 Article 40.3.1. See I’OT v B [1998] 2 IR 321. 
437 Article 8. See Odièvre v. France, app no 42326/98, 13 February 2003. 
438 11.134. 
439 4.96-4.97; 32.38. 



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1939 but not empowered to permanently place them with a private individual. 440 In the 1911 
census, across Ireland, 438 children aged from one month were identified as ‘adopted’. 
Despite the lack of legal regulation in this period, mothers still had to sign ‘agreements’441 
with the authorities/charities overseeing the arrangement. Mothers had automatic rights of 
custody to their children including the right to recover a child, and so these agreements did 
not affect the legal relationships between them and their children.442 Yet without an adequate 
social welfare framework (3.2), recovering their child was not a realistic option for most single 
mothers.443 
 
The 1952 Act provided for permanent transfer of parental rights from natural parents to 
adoptive parents. A number of long-term fostering arrangements were regularised with the 
passage of this legislation.444 Once an adoption order was made, a child was considered the 
child of the adopters, with natural parents losing all parental rights. A mother was required 
to sign two consent forms: an initial agreement to place a child for adoption, and later a 
consent to the adoption order.  
 
Adoption consent generated very few court cases, especially until the late 1970s, but this does 
not mean that most women whose children were adopted consented at the time.445 In 2013, 
the Australian government apologised for past policies of forced adoption. Here, we follow 
the approach of the 2012 Australian Senate Inquiry into coerced and forced adoptions.446 In 
determining that adoptions were forced, this inquiry examined, not only failure to adhere to 
the formal adoption law but the overwhelming effects of social and emotional pressure on 
women’s ability to give real consent, even where legal requirements were met. 447 
 

 
440 Public law structures acknowledged a ‘right of return’; 4.100; 11.15; 11.35. While public assistance 
authorities ostensibly had ‘all the rights and powers of the parents’ over a child that they maintained, 
(Public Assistance Act 1939, s46) in reality, these were expressly limited by statute. The authority was 
not allowed to detain a child if a mother could maintain the child and claimed it back. (Public Assistance 
Act 1939 s44(4)) The Public Assistance authorities were allowed to board out a child under the Public 
Assistance Act 1939 but not empowered to place them permanently with a private individual.  
441 32.12-32.53. 
442 32.37; Under Irish law mothers could consent to their children being cared for by other private 
individuals as part of their right of custody. However, this consent was temporary because they 
retained the legal right to have their children returned to them, at any point, except in exceptional 
circumstances where a court could refuse to enforce their parental rights on a best interest of the child 
basis (Custody of Children Act 1891, s3; Guardianship of Infant Act 1964, s14; In Re M. (An Infant) [1946] 
I.R. 334 at 345 per Gavan Duffy P.). 
443 32.25. 
444 11.138. 
445 32.154. 
446 

https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Community_Affairs/Comp
leted_inquiries/2010-13/commcontribformerforcedadoption/report/index. 
447 In Australia, adoptions could legally be concluded within days or weeks of birth during the period 
under examination, leading to ‘rapid adoptions’ which denied the mother the opportunity to make a 
meaningful decision. This was not the case in Ireland. 32.139. However, the Australian inquiry did not 
confine itself to the question of rapid adoptions. 



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The Irish law on consent focused on ensuring that mothers understood the legal consequences 
of adoption and signed the relevant papers. In many cases, consent to adoption fell short of 
the legal standards. The Commission heard from women who insist that they did not sign 
consent forms. 448 Several did not understand what they were signing, including because they 
were not given a real opportunity to read it,449 or had literacy difficulties.450 The Adoption 
Board had the responsibility to satisfy itself that the mother understood the nature and effect 
of the consent and of the adoption order but there was minimal – if any – real oversight, 
especially before the 1970s.451 Only from 1976 onwards did natural mothers receive the 
necessary support from trained social workers and others to have a real chance to assert their 
agency during the consent process. Even then, the presence of a social worker did not 
guarantee that a mother’s desire to raise her child would be respected. 452  
 
In theory, natural mothers had time after the initial adoption placement in which to change 
their minds. It is important to emphasise that mother and child were often separated by the 
point of placement, 453 including in the 1970s and 1980s.454 Some mothers received no prior 
notice of when the adoption would happen.455 Some were still recovering from labour when 
asked to consent to placement or gave consent shortly after they saw their child for what they 
believed to be the last time. Even if Irish mothers theoretically had a legal ‘option’ of objecting 
to adoption later on (between the two ‘consents’) the reality was often quite different. The 
Commission heard evidence from women who made concrete plans to keep their children, 
only to be overruled,456 or who were prevented from exercising their statutory right to change 
their minds.457  
 

 
448 19.178, Confidential Committee 99, 144. 
449 19.200. 
450 3.167; 19.187, 19.2, 20.151, 20.157, 32.193, 36.321, Confidential Committee 147, 98, 92, 91. 
451 32.170; 32.182. 
452 As an indication of relevant attitudes in the 1970s see ‘Pressure on Unwed Mums to Keep Baby Gone 
Too Far’, Irish Independent March 29, 1976, p. 3 in which an Adoption Board social worker suggests that 
the policy of encouraging single women to raise their children may have gone ‘too far’. For a much later 
example see In re DG An Infant [1991] 1 IR 491 (heard in 1989). Lavan J in the High Court describes how 
three Barnardos social workers had, in his words, attempted to ‘blacken the character’ of 15-year-old 
schoolgirl in order to persuade the Court to dispense with the requirement that she consent to her 
child’s adoption. The social workers had not treated her or her child’s best interests as paramount. See 
also Confidential Committee, 165 in which the witness describes the pressure her social worker placed 
her under to have her child adopted.  
453 The High Court effectively approved of this practice. See S v. Eastern Health Board (32.129) in which 
consent to placement was given after 10 days v Eastern Health Board, unreported judgment of Finlay 
P. of 28 February 1979: McC v. An Bord Uchtála [1982] ILRM 159 a case involving St. Louise’s Adoption 
Society in which the mother had consented to placement 3 days after birth (32.116) treating a first 
coerced consent as cured by a second uncoerced consent and McF v. G [1983] ILRM 228 in which the 
child was place for adoption 8 days after birth at Bessborough (32.117), dispensing with the need for a 
second consent despite evidence that the first was coerced. 
454 18.378, Confidential Committee 152, 32.197. 
455 Confidential Committee 98, 88, 20.133. 
456 Confidential Committee 56,92, 94, 22. 
457 Confidential Committee 88. 



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Other women reported explicit and immediate coercion; for example, being subjected to 
verbal abuse or physical violence458 during the signing of papers or being locked in a room459 
while the baby was taken.460 Sometimes, these breaches were attributable to the actions of 
family members461 and institutional staff, but often they were visible to, or abetted by social 
workers, adoption agency staff, Protestant and Roman Catholic clergy and solicitors.462 
 
A range of broader pressures also undermined women’s consent to adoption. The law did not 
recognise this as invalidating consent.463  
 
Many mothers’ impossible financial position affected their consent. They were without any 
effective right to public assistance until 1973 and received only meagre assistance after that 
(3.2). There is also evidence that in the 1960s, women and girls who might have preferred to 
have their child boarded out temporarily, while they earned and saved some money, were 
not permitted to do so, because local government payments ceased in such circumstances.464 
Adoption had become the imposed default option for poor women and girls. In some cases, 
adoption may have seemed the only route out of institutionalisation (3.4) for both mother and 
child.465 However, the Commission recognises that women of all social backgrounds 
experienced coerced adoption; the pressure to conceal pregnancy outside of marriage 
transcended class (2.1).  
 
Social workers who worked in institutions in the later decades under review gave evidence 
of a systemic culture of adoption466 in which immense pressure was placed on mothers to 
assent.467 Involuntary detention and associated abuse and degrading treatment (3.6) would 
have had a devastating influence on the mothers’ agency (4.1) and on their ability to resist the 
pressure to sign. Mothers who expressed a desire to keep their child were typically met with 
efforts to undermine their confidence and to persuade them to engage in the adoption 
process.468 Mothers were routinely told that their baby would have a better life if they were 
adopted, and they were made to believe that they had nothing to offer their child.469  
 
Some mothers had a longer history of institutionalisation, because they were disabled or had 
been raised in an industrial school. Some mothers were children themselves, but they were 

 
458 18.349, 18.364, 24.93, 32.193, Confidential Committee 103, 102, 98, 94-96. 
459 Some adoptions took place directly from homes 
460 Confidential Committee, 94. 
461 32.236. 
462 18.318; 32.161; Confidential Committee 99. 
463 32.118; G v. An Bord Uchtála [1980] IR 32 had indicated that consent motivated by ‘fear, stress or 
anxiety, or consent or conduct dictated by poverty or other deprivations does not constitute a valid 
consent’. However, this test was not applied in subsequent High Court cases and does not seem to have 
been reasserted until the 1990s; 32.158. 
464 6.77-6.78. 
465 19.145 (Department of Health awareness of this fact, 1963). 
466 Confidential Committee, 86. 
467 Confidential Committee, 88. 
468 For example, 24.94; Confidential Committee, 90. 
469 Confidential Committee, 55-56, 88, 165; 20.122; 18.355. 



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subject to the same consent provisions as adults. 470 One woman who was 15 years old when 
having her child, told the Commission that she had simply handed him over to be adopted 
without any real understanding of what she was doing.471  
 
The Oireachtas was aware that the law on consent was inadequate. However, in the 1970s it 
legislated twice, not to strengthen mothers’ rights but to reduce their opportunities for 
resistance. The Adoption Act 1974 reduced the minimum age at which adoption could take 
place, from 6 months to just 6 weeks.472 It also empowered the High Court to dispense with 
the requirement of a second consent where the mother refused to give it.473 It was generally 
considered in the child’s best interests to remain with the prospective adopters.474 In 1976 the 
Supreme Court voided an adoption because the natural mother had not been made aware of 
her legal right to change her mind at the time she consented to the adoption.475 The Oireachtas 
responded to this judgment by retrospectively validating any and all adoption orders which 
were defective because the mother was not fully aware of her rights at the time of giving 
consent.476 Given the extraordinarily high adoption rates for children of single mothers,477 and 
the social knowledge of the difficulties mothers faced,478 it was essential that the State enacted 
robust measures to prevent coerced adoption. It did not do so, and the Commission cannot be 
confident that the majority of mothers consented to adoption. 
 
The Commission has seen evidence of illegal adoptions including falsifying birth certificates 
to give the impression that adopters were the baby’s natural parents.479 Sometimes records 
were falsified where the adoptive parents were otherwise ineligible to adopt. The 
Commission has had sight of the unpublished Independent Review Report into Incorrect 
Birth Registrations, which indicates substantial potential illegality in this area.480 The 

 
470 32.126. 
471 Confidential Committee, p. 106. 
472 Section 8, Adoption Act 1974. During debates on the Act, Senator Timothy McAuliffe called for the 
institutions to be abolished and argued that children born in them should have the same rights as 
others. He also pointed out that boarding-out normally resulted in exploitation for profit of these 
children. Adoption Bill, 1963: Second Stage, 
https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/seanad/1963-12-18/speech/131/.  
473 32.110-32.112. 
474 32.125. 
475 Discussed at 32.106. 
476 Discussed at 32.107. 
477 6.75; 32.27. 
478 32.91. 
479 For an example pre-1953 see In Re: M. An Infant [1946] IR 334. See also discussion of St. Rita’s at 
32.394-32.419. This falsification can have serious effects for particular cohorts of adopted people. For 
instance, an adult born in Northern Ireland but adopted in the Republic of Ireland might lose their 
British citizenship if their place of birth was not recorded on their birth certificate. 
480 32.41; 32.402.  In February 2018 Tusla confirmed to the Department of Children and Youth Affairs 
that at least 126 children adopted through St Patrick’s Guild Adoption Society had been the subject of 
an illegal birth registration. The Commission also had pre-publication access to A Shadow Cast Long - 
Independent Review Report into Incorrect Birth Registrations May 2019. Now available at: 
https://www.gov.ie/pdf/?file=https://assets.gov.ie/126039/ac34f6a0-5a59-4316-91bf-
13aefdd1058b.pdf#page=null (last visited 16 March 2021).   

https://www.gov.ie/pdf/?file=https://assets.gov.ie/126039/ac34f6a0-5a59-4316-91bf-13aefdd1058b.pdf#page=null
https://www.gov.ie/pdf/?file=https://assets.gov.ie/126039/ac34f6a0-5a59-4316-91bf-13aefdd1058b.pdf#page=null


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Commission regrets that the State has taken such a long time to inquire into this issue.481 
It has been a criminal offence to register a birth incorrectly since 1874.482 The Department 
of Health knew of these practices from at least the 1950s.483 Although the State tolerated 
them, it is likely that the threat of criminalisation encouraged strategic or minimalist 
record keeping. The impact on affected people’s right to identity (4.1) has been 
immeasurable; tracing relatives has been rendered impossible in many cases. 
 
 
4.3 INTERCOUNTRY ADOPTION 
 
Intercountry adoption occurs where a child is taken from their country of residence and 
placed with adoptive parents in another jurisdiction. The harms of illegal and coerced closed 
adoption are amplified when a child is taken to be raised abroad, because the child may be 
permanently separated from their natural parents and their national culture and identity. By 
the 1950s, there was significant demand from White U.S. adoptive parents for White children 
from Ireland, in part, because other European countries had either forbidden the practice or 
tightened their rules to prevent adoption abuses.484 This demand may have suited State 
interests because, following intercountry adoption, there was no risk that a child would 
become a financial burden on the public purse.  
 
Official institutional and external records examined by the Commission show that 1,638 
children who were resident in institutions were placed for intercountry adoption between 
1922-1980s.485 However, evidence of the probable scale of illegal birth registrations in Ireland 
during that time suggests that the actual number of children taken out of Ireland for adoption 
may be higher. 
 
In 2010, Ireland introduced legislation, the Adoption Act 2010, 486 to recognise and regulate 
inter-country adoption, following the ratification of the 1993 Hague Adoption Convention.487 
Within this strict international framework, intercountry adoption remains a controversial 
practice and is only considered if no domestic child-care solution can be found. 488 In Ireland 
it was used even when natural mothers were willing, but unsupported, to care for their 
children. There was no legal basis whatsoever for the permanent surrender of Irish-born 
children for subsequent adoption abroad during the period under review. Although 

 
481 The Adoption Authority of Ireland reported evidence of illegal registration to the Department of 
Children and Youth Affairs in 2011. No inquiry was launched. 
https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/commentanalysis/arid-30854861.html 
482 32.292. 
483 32.393. See also IO’T v. B [1998] 2IR 321.  
484 32.303. 
485 The total number of inter-country adoptions is at least 2,000. However, some of these took place 
through institutions not under the Commission’s remit including St Patrick’s Guild.  
486 Adoption Act 2010. 
487 The Adoption Act 1991 allowed recognition of adoptions by Irish residents who adopted abroad. 
488 See Article 21 of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child and the preamble to the Hague 
Convention 1993 

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institutions used ‘certificates of surrender’489 and the Department of External Affairs required 
formal parental consent to intercountry adoption before issuing a passport for a child, it was 
not legally possible for mothers to consent to permanent surrender of parental rights in this 
way. It was an offence under the Adoption Act, 1952 to remove the child of a single mother 
from Ireland unless that child was aged over one year, and a parent, guardian or relative had 
given their consent.490 
 
The Commission has seen evidence of at least four different types of practices which could be 
classified as exploitative forms of intercountry adoption: 

 
1. Transferral of non-marital children to Northern Ireland for adoption, which was not 

permitted by Irish law.491  
2. Movement of pregnant women from the institutions to give birth in the USA where the 

child would later be adopted under local state law. This practice was not illegal, but it was 
exploitative and calls women’s consent to the adoption into question.492  

3. Illegal birth registration cases where children were born to Irish mothers in Ireland, but 
their foreign adoptive parents were registered as the natural parents on the child’s birth 
certificate. This form of ‘child laundering’ allowed the adopters to bypass legal child 
surrender and vetting processes in their home State, putting the children at risk. Illegal 
birth registration was also a specific criminal offence under Irish law. 493  

4. Developed processes of informal intercountry ‘adoption’ where children born in the 
institutions were surrendered by their mothers to private individuals or adoption societies 
and then matched by Catholic charities to adoptive parents living abroad, usually in the 
USA. They were adopted under the domestic law of the foreign country.  

 
These intercountry adoptions created a ‘limping’ status. While recognised as transferring 
parental status under the law of the country where the child was placed, they were not legal 
under Irish law where the mother’s rights of custody endured. However, once a child had left 
Ireland there was no practical means by which a mother could enforce her custody rights and 
seek the return of her child. 
 
Irish state bodies were wary of direct involvement with intercountry adoption and there is 
evidence of contemporary concern about the practice. Public assistance authorities 
understood that they had no legal authority to facilitate intercountry adoption directly but 
allowed private intermediaries to facilitate the practice.  
 
Religious influence on the practice of intercountry adoption was endemic. Passports were 
issued to children by the Department of External Affairs following a protocol written by 
Archbishop McQuaid and Fr Cecil Barrett, in which the interests of children were 

 
489 32.99; 32.296 
490 Section 40(3), Adoption Act 1952. 
491 12.156. 
492 32.381-32.389. 
493 Births and Deaths Registration Act 1874. s40. 



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inadequately protected.494 The protocol required that Catholic children’s proposed adoptive 
parents would be vetted by Catholic organisations, but this system could not ensure that the 
child would remain in the care of those parents. While the Commission was impressed by the 
thoroughness of some US domestic adoption processes there was simply no guarantee that a 
child sent to the USA would enter these processes.495 The Commission notes that it has not 
been shown evidence of any parental vetting for children released to U.S. adopters by the 
Braemar Rescue Home for Protestant girls or by the Bethany Home. 
 
In the mid-1950s St. Anne’s Adoption Society was established in Cork, specifically to arrange 
the adoption of ‘repatriated’ Roman Catholic babies born in Britain. This was also unregulated 
intercountry adoption. Had these children been adopted in Britain, they would have had 
better rights of access to their records than they currently enjoy as Irish-adopted people.  
 
Children were placed for adoption illegally and by means of coercion. There is widespread 
evidence of abusive adoptive practices sharing characteristics, including inducement of 
consent, with what we now understand as child trafficking.496 There were deep economic and 
demographic asymmetries between the adoptive parents497 and natural mothers, and this will 
have impacted women’s ability to resist the adoption of a child abroad. Government officials 
considered that the material gains of adoption to a family in the United States were 
obvious.498 Adoptive parents could contribute financially to the institutions. The 
Commission heard evidence that payment was made in respect of some U.S. adoptions, 
whether in the form of personal gifts or donations to the institutions. 499 By contrast, the 
majority of natural mothers could not afford to keep their children. It is likely that this 
generated inappropriate economic incentives to arrange intercountry adoptions. 

 
 
  

 
494 32.319. 
495 32.379. 
496 Report of the Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, 
UN Human Rights Council, 7 March 2017, A/HRC/34/55, para 23, 28. 
497 3.343; 19.185; 32.299; American adoptive parents were respectable married Catholics, or for those 
children born in Protestant run institutions, respectable married Protestants. Even where American 
adoptive parents were not wealthy, they were more financially stable and living in a more prosperous 
country than the natural mother. 
498 19.107. 
499 32.337; see discussion at 32.368 indicating these were received by the Daughters of Charity pre-1957 
and 32.372 – 32.374 indicating fees were paid to interested parties in the United States. Language at 
32.37 indicates that some parents understood that they were participating in commercial adoption. See 
also the prohibition on payments to those who arranged adoption in the Adoption Act, 1952, suggesting 
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5. DISCRIMINATION 
 
There are limits to the extent to which the Commission can fully engage with issues of 
discrimination in this process. They relate to framing and representation. By looking at issues 
of discrimination in isolation, rather than examining their intersections, it is impossible to 
fully examine the extent of discrimination within these systems.  
 
The Commission recognises that discrimination on the basis of race, disability, religion and 
membership of the Traveller community was and remains widespread within Irish society 
throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The Commission recognises this 
discrimination is unacceptable and should have no place within either public or private 
discourse. 
 
Whether this discrimination was actively intended or not is immaterial. The institutions did 
not merely reflect wider patterns in Irish society; they compounded those patterns. 
Discrimination experienced while under the control of an institution is particularly important 
because it contributes to individual vulnerability and exacerbates inhuman and degrading 
treatment and may have long-term impacts on mental health (3.6). 
 
 
5.1 RACE 
 
The Commission received witness statements and evidence strongly suggestive of 
discrimination in relation to the fostering or adoption of mixed-race children, and 
discriminatory attitudes related to their institutional racialisation. The Commission concludes 
that the race of the parents and/or the child affected the outcome for the child, especially in 
preventing adoption or fostering.500  
 
Several mixed-race witnesses testified to experiences of institutional racism.501 Recording of a 
child’s race in institutional records was not innocuous. It is wrong to assume the neutrality of 
racial classifications without adequately interrogating their legacies and origins in specific 
geographical and political contexts.502 The Report demonstrates that racialisation processes in 
the institutions involved the application of language reminiscent of U.S. slavery and Jim Crow 

 
500 31.171, further noting that the same conclusion was reached in relation to the role of mental and/or 
physical conditions/disabilities of the mother and/or the child in affecting the outcome for the child, 
as being factors in the prevention of adoption or fostering. 
501 31.172. See also 31.43. Professor Bryan Fanning, a professor of migration and social policy at 
University College Dublin, told the Commission that "in his experience, black children were 
problematic to the system and the stories he had heard from them suggest that they had experienced 
racism as children and that it had impacted on their lives." 
502 Elaine Moriarty. “Measuring Mixedness in Ireland: Constructing Sameness and Difference” in 
Zarine L. Rocha and Peter J. Aspinall (eds), The Palgrave International Handbook of Mixed Racial and 
Ethnic Classification, Cham, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, 249–265, at p.249. 



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America to Irish children in the latter half of the twentieth century.503 This language of 
segregation was used to record the mixed-race child ranging from ‘coloured,’504 ‘half caste,’505 
‘negro,’506 ‘half negro,’507 ‘dark skinned,’ to ‘African’.508 Other children were labelled 
‘Indian,’509 or ‘half caste (Asian) infant.’510  
 
The evidence suggests that these terms were used in a racist manner, and not for any purpose 
other than to draw attention to the phenotype of the child, resulting in their stigmatisation.511 
Department of Health inspectors’ reports, though generally brief in reference to mixed-race 
children, reflect the attribution of racialised impediments, 512 with one inspector remarking 
that ‘coloured babies’ were ‘difficult to rear.’ 513 Adoption placement decisions for these 
children took account of their race. Of the 275 children who were in Pelletstown and 
Bessborough, where race is noted on their records over the period in question, only 56% were 
placed for adoption.514 There is clear evidence that these children would have been placed for 
adoption if they had been White. The Report is peppered with such evidence. 515 For example, 
 

'Coloured child. Healthy. Medically fit for adoption but owing to colour this would be 
difficult.’ ‘Healthy. Half caste child. On account of above will be unfit for adoption. 
Boarding out (this child was, however, adopted).’ ‘Healthy. Coloured child. Unfit for 
adoption on account of colour only.’ 

 
The presence of comparatively large numbers of mixed-race children in just two of the bigger 
institutions may reflect a policy to house these children together rather than disperse them to 
smaller institutions. This suggests a policy of de facto segregation516 within these institutions 
that would echo similar results for mixed-race children in industrial schools. 517 
 

 
503 31.32. 
504 Inter alia 7.47, 8.71, and 31.51. 
505 At inter alia 13.425 and 19.107. 
506 31.32. 
507 21.64. 
508 21.64 and 23.74. 
509 31.18. 
510 31.29. 
511 See witness at 13.425 who testified to the Commission that the attitude to his ethnicity ‘warranted 
noting as if it were an insurmountable problem.’ 
512 31.11. 
513 31.33. The inspector further notes that such children are ‘inclined to be bronchitic in the first year of 
life.’ 
514 31.172. 
515 31.26. 
516 See witness testimony at 18.381 describing segregation of mixed-race infants at Bessborough. 
517 The Ryan Report http://www.childabusecommission.ie/rpt/ cites a 1970s report by the Child Care 
Advisor in the Department of Education, Mr Graham Granville. Granville stated in his annual report 
that: “It would appear upon examination of the files etc. that in the past many of the children admitted 
to Clifden were received into care to be removed ‘out of sight out of mind. This policy in his opinion 
was applied especially to children of different racial backgrounds” (at 9.23-24). Dr. Phil Mullen 
discusses similar findings in her research of 15 mixed race women who grew up in industrial schools 
in the 1950s-1970s. 

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The Commission found evidence of perceived difficulty in placing mixed-race children.518 
Many adoption societies had long waiting lists of prospective parents but no children for 
adoption, while recognising that their major challenge was placing mixed-race children.519 A 
1968 Sunday Independent report stated that ‘apart from coloured children’, almost every 
eligible child in 1967 was placed with new carers. 520 Children who were not adopted were 
likely to remain in institutions. Testimony describes how mixed-race children were often 
moved between institutions ‘in order to find a home’521 since they were devalued in the 
commodified marketisation of babies from institutions that did not serve them. 
 
Racist language is frequently referenced in attitudes of staff towards parents of mixed-race 
children. 522  
 
Mixed-race children were unwitting participants in both the vaccine trials recorded in 
Pelletstown (2 out of 14 children in the 1960/61 Quadrivax quadruple and 1 out of 20 in the 
Quintuple vaccine trial). A remarkable 23% (13 out of 56) of children who received a course 
of oral polio vaccine in Pelletstown were described as ‘half-caste’ or ‘coloured child.’523 This 
strongly suggests a policy of selection. The commercial and scientific rationale for such a 
policy is not clear from the available records. The Commission notes that affected mix-race 
individuals may be legitimately concerned that they were selected with an eye towards 
international markets in the US and Africa and that further investigation is needed. 
 
Finally, evidence that mixed-race children were placed for adoption or for fostering with 
unsuitable families on many occasions foregrounds the lack of racial literacy and care of the 
racial and cultural heritage of mixed-race children in this period, resulting in irreparable harm 
to their identity formation. 

 
 

 
518 See also AMRI, Shadow Report to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination 
https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CERD/Shared%20Documents/IRL/INT_CERD_NGO_IRL_37
383_E.pdf p. 5. 
519 7.61, evidence of the Cork Diocesan Archives, St Anne's Adoption Society, Box 3. 'The fact that T is 
half coloured could affect her chances of adoption.’ Cf. also note at 31.11, that a foster mother, was keen 
to adopt ‘the little coloured boy’, but the inspector asked, ‘but will it work out?’ The Commission 
highlights other evidence at 31.13 such as that of Fr James Good of St Anne’s Adoption Society who 
observed that ‘…where there is any question of blood other than north European there would be very 
little likelihood of our placing such a child’. He thought that some mixed-race children were being 
adopted in Dublin, but he feared that they would struggle to be accepted in the south, ‘there are still so 
very few coloured people here that they still excite admiration’. 
520 The article further quoted Lady Valerie Goulding, who was involved in services for children with 
disabilities, as saying that ‘you are looked at sideways if you have a coloured baby with you’. According 
to this article approximately six ‘coloured’ children were adopted every year but there was a backlog 
of 20 such children ‘causing a big headache for various organisations dealing with child adoption,’ [at 
31.14]. 
521 31.33. 
522 31.33. 
523 34.162. 

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5.2 DISABILITY 
 
There was a flow of disabled people between mother and baby institutions, psychiatric 
hospitals, county ‘homes’,524 Magdalen laundries, industrial schools and specialist disability 
services. Disabled children often stayed longer in mother and baby institutions.525 When 
disabled people left one of the institutions considered in this Report, it was in many cases only 
to enter another kind of segregated setting, and there was little to no support for disabled 
people exiting the relevant setting and being supported to live in the community.526 
Institutionalisation was often life-long, and entailed life-long exposure to degrading 
conditions.527 Alternatives to institutionalisation for disabled people existed throughout the 
time period under review, and national policy on disability and mental health from the 1960s 
onwards528 favoured support in the community over institutionalisation. This approach was 
not reflected in the transfer of disabled women and children into and out of the institutions 
included in this Report. High infant mortality rates sometimes were attributed to disabilities, 
raising questions about the treatment of disabled children, especially in the earlier period 
under examination. 
 
Evidence exists from those familiar with various institutions of discrimination regarding 
decisions as to whether to ‘board out’ disabled children or place them for adoption. While it 
would be important for prospective foster or adoptive parents to be equipped and supported 
to address any health issues a child might have, this should never have resulted in the use of 
disability as a criterion to deny opportunities to a child. 529 With respect to adoption, there was 
no legal basis for the use of disability of either the child, or the mother, as a criterion for this 
decision, and the staff in these institutions had no legal authority to make a decision on this 
basis. Furthermore, evidence exists of disabled mothers who wanted to keep their children, 
but whose disabilities were used by various institutions as a justification that they were unfit 
to parent them. 530  
 
In the context of disability discrimination, the report focuses on two institutions; Pelletstown 
and Bessborough, selected based on their size and longevity. 531 However, the Commission 
has gathered evidence of more widespread disability discrimination in decisions about the 
placement of disabled children for fostering (‘boarding out’) and adoption,532 and in the 

 
524 10.16. 
525  13.251. 
526 31.150. 
527 Some settings e.g. the adult public psychiatric hospital at St Ita’s Portrane were entirely unsuitable 
for very young children; 31.135; 31.175. 
528 Department of Health, Report: The Problem of the Mentally Handicapped, in Commission of Inquiry on 
Mental Handicap (Stationery Office, 1960); Report of the Commission on Inquiry on Mental Handicap 
(Stationery Office, 1965). 
529 6.79; 31.147; 31.151. 
530 23.83; 31.91; 31.106. 
531 31.2. 
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transfer of disabled mothers533 and children between mother and baby institutions and other 
institutionalised settings.534  
 
The evidence suggests that while the numbers of women entering the institutions decreased 
overall in later years, the proportion of disabled women and girls entering the institutions 
continued to increase. 535 Throughout the investigation, issues relating to consent were raised. 
Both disabled and non-disabled mothers were subjected to medical interventions without 
consent, to the adoption of their children without their consent, and were placed in the 
institutions without their consent. The belief that all single mothers were vulnerable and 
unable to consent was widespread in the earlier part of this period.536 However, disabled 
mothers’ consent was ignored for reasons beyond marital status. Their capacity to consent – 
to sex,537 to being in these institutions, to placing their children for adoption538 – was ignored, 
unsupported and in some instances used as a tool to justify their children’s continued 
institutionalisation.539 
 
There is little to suggest that efforts were made to support disabled women and girls to give 
informed consent, either to their placement in these institutions or to their children’s adoption. 
The 1952 Act gave the Adoption Board the discretion to ‘dispense with the consent of’ a 
mother if the Board was satisfied that she was ‘incapable by reason of mental infirmity of 
giving consent.’ This approach has continued in the Adoption Act 2010 which continues to 
allow for dispensing with consent on the grounds of ‘mental infirmity’, albeit now with the 
approval of the High Court rather than the Adoption Board. There is no further clarification 
in these Acts as to how ‘mental infirmity’ should be proved, but from the evidence provided 
to this Commission, it is clear that this language was often used to dispense with the consent 
of women and girls with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities in particular, to the 
placement of their children for adoption.540  
 
The Commission acknowledges that it did not meet with any advocacy group representing 
disabled people. This means that disabled people’s voices were not properly heard in the 
course of this process. These limitations of the Commission’s research will need to be 
addressed more fully in any future work. 
 
 
  

 
533 Confidential Committee, 54. 
534 31.62. 
535 1.137. 
536 9.44; 9.89; 10.14; 31.53. 
537 20.53. 23.81; 31.70; 23.81. 
538 31.70. 
539 20.79. 
540 31.71. 31.69; 20.79. 



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5.3 TRAVELLERS 
 
The Commission recognises the considerable gaps in available data on Traveller women and 
girls sent to these institutions. Under 1963 public health guidance541 Traveller women and 
girls were advised to present to maternity hospitals and other related institutions for both pre- 
and post-natal care. The Report of the Commission on Itinerancy (1963) stated that:542 
 

Itinerant mothers should be encouraged to stay in hospital for longer periods than 
they do after childbirth. The accepted period is normally ten days and medical 
practitioners in charge of maternity units should do everything possible to ensure that 
the itinerant mother is maintained for at least that period. 543 

 
Records from Pelletstown,544 Tuam545 and Stranorlar546 show that Traveller children were 
admitted seasonally for health concerns related to their poor living conditions.547 
 
Notwithstanding these health-related admissions, the available evidence indicates that a 
number of ‘social cases,’548 ‘unwed’ women, their children549 and whole Traveller families 
were sent to institutions. Such practices are indicative of pervasive State policy post-
independence, specifically post 1963 and the Commission on Itinerancy Report, which stated 
that the Traveller way of life was intrinsically harmful and that children should be removed 
from the Traveller culture.550 This policy reflects the cycle of institutionalisation which many 
Travellers experience, as a direct result of the State’s policies to assimilate Travellers to the 
settled way of life.  
 
Undoubtedly, involuntary detention (3.4) was traumatic for all women. However, the 
Commission recognises the additional levels of harm and trauma which were experienced by 
Travellers detained within the four walls of an institution. The Commission has seen evidence 
that Traveller women and girls may have left the institutions of their own accord in rare 
instances.551 Nevertheless, most were not aware that they could leave and were forced to 
endure conditions of confinement directly conflicting with their culture. In 1974, the Manager 
of the Magdalen Home in Sean MacDermott St, recognised these divergences between 
institutional confinement and the Traveller culture, noting that [Travellers] ‘cannot be 
accommodated in the present institutions, because such units are entirely alien to their culture 

 
541 Report of the Commission on Itinerancy (1963), 51; https://www.lenus.ie/handle/10147/324231. 
542 Report of the Commission on Itinerancy (1963), 51; https://www.lenus.ie/handle/10147/324231. 
543 Report of the Commission on Itinerancy (1963), 50 & 51; https://www.lenus.ie/handle/10147/324231. 
544 13.262, 13.340. 
545 15.98. 
546 29.7. 
547 13.340. 
548 13.282. 
549 29.7, 29.107. 
550 Report of the Commission on Itinerancy (1963), 69; https://www.lenus.ie/handle/10147/324231 
551 ‘She remembered one mother who was a member of the Traveller community. She said that this 
young woman found it difficult to settle; she left because she could not cope.’; 24.176. 



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and upbringing.’552 The Commission therefore recognises that admission of Travellers to the 
institutions was part of a framework which forced Traveller women and girls from their 
cultural and traditional nomadic way of life and required them to assimilate to settled living, 
further eroding their cultural identity.  
 
The Commission acknowledges that discrimination was widespread throughout the 
institutions. However, we conclude that Traveller women, girls and children experienced 
additional discriminatory treatment on the basis of their ethnicity. The evidence presented 
both to the Commission and cross-referenced from other reports reflects this normalised 
discriminatory context. The Ryan Report into industrial schools highlighted and recorded 
several instances of discrimination faced by children.553 While similar discriminatory 
language was not found directly within the official inspection reports relied upon here, clear 
indications of prejudice and persistent othering arose in the manner in which Traveller 
mothers and children were discussed in staff testimony.554  

 
 
5.4 RELIGION 
 
Religion was an integral part of each of the institutions under review.555 There was very little 
evident understanding of religion outside of Christianity. In one adoption case 'Hindu' and 
'Muslim' were used interchangeably.556 The main institutions were either religiously owned 
and run or owned by local government and staffed and run by religious figures (3.1). Women 
and girls were often referred to institutions by a clergyman or by a member of a religious 
order. 557  
 
Women and girls were admitted to institutions on the basis of their perceived religious 
membership, or that of their children, often irrespective of their personal wishes or attitudes 
to the church in which they had been raised.558 There is ample evidence of ‘denominational 
competition’, indicating that the care given to mothers and children was secondary to the 
desire to avoid proselytization, especially of Catholics by Protestants.559 There is some 

 
552 Submission to the Task Force on Child Care Services from Sr Lucy Bruton, Convent of Our Lady of 
Mercy, Lower Sean MacDermott Street, Dublin 1, 10th December 1974. Department of Health C.4.01.03 
Task Force Submissions Vol 1. 
553 ‘Witnesses recalled being constantly told their parents were ‘alcoholics’, ‘prostitutes’, ‘mad’ and ‘no 
good’…. witnesses reported being verbally abused and ridiculed about their Traveller and mixed-race 
backgrounds. ‘Br ...X... called me a kn***** and said my parents didn’t want me, I felt worthless and 
degraded.’ Ryan Report, http://www.childabusecommission.ie/rpt/ Volume 3 Chapter 7: Record of 
abuse (male witnesses) Paragraph 236 
554 As indicated within their grouping as ‘‘itinerants, destitutes, evicted persons,’ (13.340). 
555 4.26. 
556 31.30.  
557 8.11; 8.100. 
558 22.67; 23.85; 23.100 
559 3.35-3.37; 5.104; 7.53; 8.81; 21.55; 21.62. 

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evidence that the Bethany Home and the Church of Ireland’s Irish Church Missions engaged 
in practices of this sort.560 
 
These concerns delayed the passage of the adoption law itself by years,561 during which time 
Catholic organisations regulated Catholic adoptions in accordance with the principles of 
canon law.562 Catholic groups opposed to adoption legislation objected that mothers might 
consent to have their child adopted by a couple of another religion or might be pressurised to 
do so. One Attorney General described the risk as that of endangering children’s souls.563 The 
Roman Catholic hierarchy only supported the introduction of adoption on the basis that the 
legislation would safeguard the child from this risk by ensuring that the child’s adoptive 
parents and natural mother were of the same religion.564 This requirement was not eased until 
1974, following a constitutional challenge.565  
 
The Commission has seen evidence of Catholic women and girls who bargained with the 
authorities by strategically ‘pretending’ to be Protestants or threatening to give their child to 
a Protestant institution.566 Sometimes they did this to avoid being sent to a Catholic institution 
or for reasons of anonymity. A Roman Catholic woman in a Protestant institution, or vice 
versa, was often understood to have transgressed the bounds of communal control and could 
be sought out and removed to an institution of her own denomination.567  
 
State agents tolerated this sectarian policing of communal boundaries and may have enforced 
them. For example, in 1939 in response to CPRSI complaints about severe neglect of children 
living in Bethany Home and boarded out by Bethany, a DLGPH medical inspector placed 
pressure on Bethany Home to cease admitting Roman Catholics.568 The Commission notes 
that this response prioritised defusing sectarian conflict over exercise of the Department’s 
protective statutory powers, rather than investigating the possibility of temporary closure. 
(3.1). 
 
The State’s ‘repatriation’ scheme (3.4) directly co-operated with Roman Catholic organisations 
in Britain, including the Crusade of Rescue, which were determined to ensure that children 
born to Catholic mothers were adopted into Catholic families. A woman repatriated to Ireland 
would often be reallocated to an institution on the basis of county of origin,569 number of prior 
pregnancies and religion.570 

 
560 22.61-22.65 
561 32.30- 32.89 especially 32.78-32.79. 
562 32.25; 32.54. 
563 32.76. 
564 32.89. 
565 32.102. 
566 5.98; 8.17; 8.82; 8.89; 8.96; 11.118; 21.55; 21.59-21.63.  
567 8.14; 8.81 – 8.83. 
568 22.93-22.94 
569 Some returning via Dublin initially stayed at Regina Coeli; 21.33. 
570 7.10 refers to non-Catholic girls who were referred to Protestant institutions and societies or sent to 
Catholic institutions where arrangements would be made for a clergyman of their denomination to 
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Religious influence was considered central to moral ‘reform’ of single mothers571 in both 
Protestant and Catholic institutions. Once in an institution, women were often required to 
participate in religious activities.572 In State-funded institutions run by Catholic religious staff, 
the religious ethos affected living conditions. For example, at Bessborough, penitential dietary 
restrictions imposed on pregnant women and nursing mothers meant that they were severely 
deprived of protein.573 
 
Women and girls experienced gender-based discrimination related to the religious ethos of 
the institutions they entered, even where they shared the religion of the staff and managers. 
Single mothers were perceived to have violated religious norms around pregnancy and 
marriage. They were deprived of choice around pregnancy by restrictive laws on 
contraception,574 censorship575 and abortion that, for most of the period under study, mirrored 
contemporary Catholic social teaching and Protestant institutional practices. In the 
institutions, they were spoken to and about in terms of the ‘sin’ of their pregnancy and the 
need to redeem themselves.576 Some witnesses to the Confidential Committee recall that the 
language of ‘sin’ was used when they were punished and verbally abused577 (3.6). Where 
women and girls internalised a sense of their own sinfulness and inadequacy, they were less 
likely to be able to resist pressure to relinquish their children for adoption.  Natural fathers 
often suffered stigma578 (2.3) but were not punished in the same ways. 
 
  

 
571 6.52. 
572 3.38.; 9.24.; 22.14.; 22.60.; 22.61. 
573 5.24. 
574 12.31. 
575 The Censorship of Publications Act 1929 restricted access to information on contraception and was 
not repealed until early 1980. The Regulation of Information Act 1995 restricted access to information 
about abortion services abroad and was in force until early 2019. 
576 18.303, 18.348, 19.197; 23.5. 
577 Confidential Committee 62, 79, 110. 
578 9.8-9.11. 



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6. CONCLUSION 

 
The ‘rewritten Executive Summary’ ends here. Instead of a formal conclusion, we summarise 
here the differences between our main findings and those of the Commission. 
 

Commission Finding Where Our Finding Where 
General Responsibility  
Responsibility for the harsh 
treatment of women and their 
children rests primarily with 
the fathers of the children and 
with the mothers’ immediate 
families. Lack of family 
support was the primary 
reason for entering an 
institution. 

Prologue Although lack of family 
support was an important 
factor in many women’s and 
girls’ experiences, 
responsibility in law for 
breaches of constitutional and 
human rights rests with the 
State, which funded and 
regulated the institutions, 
delegated key public functions 
to religious bodies, and 
through its laws created the 
conditions by which the 
institutions became a default 
option for the containment of 
single mothers. The State was 
generally aware of abusive 
conditions in the institutions. 

3.1 and 4. 
 
 
On the 
role of 
natural 
fathers 
see 2.3. 

Deprivation of Liberty  
There is no evidence that 
women were forced to enter 
mother and baby homes by 
the Church or State 
authorities 

Executive 
Summary 
[8] 

There is substantial evidence of 
unconstitutional involuntary 
detention, especially in the 
earlier period under study. 

3.4 

Women were always free to 
leave if they took their child 
 
Even if they were unable to 
leave without their children, 
they also owed legal duties to 
their children. 

Recommen
dations [27] 

Women and girls were 
generally free to leave in law, 
but not in practice. Evidence in 
the Report indicates there were 
barriers to leaving the 
institutions. Leaving was not 
actively facilitated. Women 
were not financially supported 
to perform their duties to their 
children outside of the 
institutions 

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They were not ‘incarcerated’ 
in the strict meaning of the 
word but in the earlier years, 
at least, with some 
justification, they thought 
they were. 

Recommen
dations [27-
28] 

There is clear evidence of 
unconstitutional involuntary 
detention, especially in the 
earlier period under study. 

3.4 

Unpaid Labour  
In mother and baby homes 
girls and women were 
expected to work but this was 
generally work which they 
would have had to do if they 
were living at home…no 
different from work carried 
out by women on farms all 
over the country. 
Exceptions include (1) 
women in county homes, (2) 
women in Tuam (3) women 
working outside the homes 
without pay and (4) women 
who spent more than 6 
months in the institution. 

Recommen
dations [30-
32] 

Labour undertaken in the 
institutions was unpaid, and 
this refusal to pay contributed 
to women’s effective 
incarceration. 
 
There is evidence that women 
and girls undertook physically 
demanding work, including 
while pregnant and 
irrespective of their age, ability, 
or health.  
 
There is no evidence that the 
impact of physically 
demanding work on maternal 
or Infant health outcomes was 
monitored by health 
authorities. 
 
Work was frequently used as 
punishment.  

3.3 and 
3.6 

Physical Abuse, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment 
Some evidence of minor 
physical abuse 

Recommen
dations [22] 

There is significant evidence of 
abuse amounting to inhuman 
and degrading treatment, 
including of pregnant women, 
children and survivors of 
sexual abuse.  
 
The right to freedom from 
inhuman and degrading 
treatment is absolute and 
breaches cannot be justified. 

3.6 

Some evidence of poor 
treatment of children when 
boarded out 

Recommen
dations [39] 

There is evidence of physical 
abuse and neglect of both 
boarded out/at nurse and 

4 



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adopted children, attributable 
to inadequate regulation of the 
family separation system. 

No evidence that women 
were denied pain relief or 
other healthcare. Maternity 
services in the institutions 
were of better quality than 
those available to the majority 
of Irish women at the time. 

Executive 
Summary 
[245] 

There is significant evidence of 
obstetric violence, which was 
unacceptable whether 
perpetrated in the institutions 
or in maternity hospitals.  

3.8 

Women were dissuaded from 
sharing their story because of 
concern for their privacy 

Executive 
Summary 
[16] 

This is an institutional 
conception of ‘privacy’ as 
secrecy and is bound up in the 
ideology of concealment on 
which this system thrived. 
 
Women in the institutions were 
often deprived of meaningful 
personal privacy. 

2.1 and 
3.6 

Children who spent very 
short periods in the 
institutions would find it very 
difficult to establish that they 
had been abused 
 

Recommen
dations [19-
23] 

This statement must be rejected 
for want of sufficient evidence.  
 
Given the extreme 
vulnerability of young children 
at a key stage in their 
development, the severity of 
the abuse is not inevitably 
determined by the length of 
stay. Children may have 
suffered long-term effects. 

3.6 

No evidence of injury as a 
result of non-consensual 
vaccine trials. 

Executive 
Summary 
[248] 

It is not possible to make this 
claim on the available evidence.  
 
Non-consensual experimental 
medical treatment is a breach of 
the right to bodily integrity.  

3.9 

Unlawful family separation 
Only children who were 
resident in an institution 
without their mothers have a 
case for redress. 

Recommen
dations [19-
23]  

The State must take account of 
the harms of forced family 
separation, and associated 
breaches of constitutional and 
human rights 
 

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Regimes of separation were 
often enforced within the 
institutions even when mother 
and child were housed in the 
same building or complex.  

Women who entered mother 
and baby homes after 1973 do 
not have a case for redress. 

Recommen
dations [23] 

Changes related to the 
introduction of Single Mothers’ 
Allowance in 1973 do not 
justify this conclusion. 

3.2 

Women who entered an 
institution pre-1973 only have 
a case for redress if 
institutionalised for longer 
than 6 months. 

Recommen
dations [33] 

No minimum time limit applies 
to the breaches we have 
identified from our analysis of 
the Report, especially those 
relating to family separation. 

4.1-4.3 

The option of legal adoption 
was a vastly better outcome 
for the children involved than 
the alternative. 

Recommen
dations [35] 

Children who were separated 
from their mothers in Ireland 
between 1922-1998, including 
adopted children, experienced 
a range of well-documented 
harms related to forced family 
separation. 
 
The appropriate comparison is 
not between adoption and 
other forms of institutional 
separation. We must take 
account of the fact that many 
children could have remained 
with their natural mothers 
instead of being 
institutionalised. 

4.1 

The Commission finds very 
little evidence that children 
were forcibly taken from their 
mothers, even if it accepts that 
women had little choice. 

Recommen
dations [34]; 
Executive 
Summary 
[34] 

There is significant evidence of 
coerced adoption, amounting 
in many cases to forced 
adoption, throughout the 
period under examination.  
 
The evidence is comparable to 
that found in Australian 
inquiries into forced adoption. 

4.2 

Practice in Ireland can be 
distinguished from the 
Australian practice of forced 
adoption 

Recommen
dations [34]; 
Executive 
Summary 
[34] 

With the exception of a small 
number of legal cases, there is 

Executive 
Summary 
[254] 



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no evidence that women did 
not consent to adoption. 
At least from the 1970s/80s 
the law was adequate to 
ensure that a mother’s 
consent was full, free and 
informed. 

Executive 
Summary 
[254] 

Any payments made by 
adoptive parents in respect of 
transnational adoptions were 
donations. 

Executive 
Summary 
[255-258] 

Donations may nevertheless 
have contributed to 
exploitation within the 
adoption process. 

4.3 

The Commission finds no 
evidence of illegal adoption 
registration in the homes 
under investigation. 

32.398 There is significant evidence of 
a variety of illegal adoption 
practices. 

4.2 

Criticism of Tusla’s handling 
of personal records is unfair 
because their practice is 
compliant with the law. 

36.80 Tusla’s practice has violated 
GDPR and the constitutional 
and human rights of affected 
people. 

4.1 

Deaths 
In cases where the mothers 
were in the homes when the 
child died, it is possible that 
they knew the burial 
arrangements or would have 
been told if they asked. 

36.80 The Commission heard 
significant evidence from 
family members who have 
been unable to access 
information about the fate of 
relatives, in breach of their 
human rights.  
 
The failure to conduct 
appropriate investigations into 
the fates of those who died in 
the homes compounds these 
breaches. 

4.4. 

Discrimination 
No findings of discrimination 
including in relation to 
fostering and adoption 
decisions. 

Executive 
Summary 
[261] 

There is significant evidence of 
discrimination on the basis of 
race, religion, disability and 
membership of the Traveller 
Community, and evidence of 
associated harms. 

5. 

 
  



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7. CLANN RECOMMENDATIONS FOR ACTION 
 
Our rewritten findings support the Clann Project’s 2020,579 and 2021 recommendations.580 The 
recommendations draw on research by Dr Claire McGettrick, born Lorraine Hughes, and Dr 
Maeve O’Rourke. They are informed by the testimony of survivors and affected people, 
adopted people and family members, as well as the recommendations of the Collaborative 
Forum on Mother and Baby Homes. 581 Clann are human rights defenders, and it is regrettable 
that their interventions on behalf of affected people have been criticised by the Commission 
and by some journalists and politicians. 582  
 
We acknowledge that many advocacy groups for affected people do not agree with all of 
Clann’s recommendations. Our position is that academics should seek to offer critical support, 
rather than override or replace work done by advocacy groups. That is the main reason why 
we have not written new substantive recommendations of our own. Clann’s 
recommendations also fit well with our work because, like us, they have pursued an approach 
that centres human rights law in their advocacy. Their work also fits well with our 
methodology (Section 8) which requires us to engage with materials available to the 
Commission at the time of writing its own Report.583 Clann’s recommendations draw on their 
2018 report584 and their other published submissions to the Commission. 
 
Clann’s key recommendations include: 
 

• Introduction of access-to-records legislation. This includes legislation ensuring 
adopted people’s unconditional access to their birth certificates, but the issue is much 
broader. Mothers, adopted people, people placed in informal care arrangements and 
other relatives must have access to their personal data, including relevant 
administrative records of public and private institutions, and corporations, including 

 
579 Clann Report especially at 135-148. The Commission briefly acknowledges Clann’s 
recommendations at 36.22-24 but appears to dismiss them on the basis that Clann did not cost their 
proposals. 
580 http://clannproject.org/restorative-recognition-scheme/clann-project-recommendations-on-
restorative-recognition-scheme/. 
581 Recommendations from the First Report of the Collaborative Forum of Former Residents of Mother and Baby 
Homes  (December, 2018) 
https://assets.gov.ie/25774/085e9ecf9bb4495c94b8a21b4c143998.pdf#page=1  
582 See e.g. https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/mother-and-baby-homes-inquiry-s-lack-of-
transparency-was-damaging-1.4466658; http://clannproject.org/correspondence-defamatory-
statements-in-the-seanad/ . 
583 See Aitheantas’ recommendations, published in January 2021. 
https://www.adopteerights.ie/2021/01/17/statement-ref-mother-and-baby-homes-report-and-
future-legislation-regarding-adoptee-access-to-birth-information/ 
584 Maeve O'Rourke, Claire McGettrick, Rod Baker, Raymond Hill et al., CLANN: Ireland's Unmarried 
mothers and their Children: Gathering the Data: Principal Submission to the Commission of 
Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes. Dublin: Justice For Magdalens Research, Adoption Rights 
Alliance, Hogan Lovells, 15 October 2018. http://clannproject.org/wp-content/uploads/Clann-
Submissions_Redacted-Public-Version-October-2018.pdf. 

http://clannproject.org/commission-report/
https://assets.gov.ie/25774/085e9ecf9bb4495c94b8a21b4c143998.pdf#page=1
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/mother-and-baby-homes-inquiry-s-lack-of-transparency-was-damaging-1.4466658
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/mother-and-baby-homes-inquiry-s-lack-of-transparency-was-damaging-1.4466658
http://clannproject.org/correspondence-defamatory-statements-in-the-seanad/
http://clannproject.org/correspondence-defamatory-statements-in-the-seanad/
https://www.adopteerights.ie/2021/01/17/statement-ref-mother-and-baby-homes-report-and-future-legislation-regarding-adoptee-access-to-birth-information/
https://www.adopteerights.ie/2021/01/17/statement-ref-mother-and-baby-homes-report-and-future-legislation-regarding-adoptee-access-to-birth-information/
http://clannproject.org/wp-content/uploads/Clann-Submissions_Redacted-Public-Version-October-2018.pdf
http://clannproject.org/wp-content/uploads/Clann-Submissions_Redacted-Public-Version-October-2018.pdf


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Magdalen laundries and industrial schools. Relatives of those who died in institutions 
must have a right of access to relevant records. Access requires: 

o Proper implementation of GDPR rights by all controllers of institutional, 
adoption and other care-related records. 

o Placement of the National Contact Preference Register on a statutory footing. 
o Creation of a National Archive of Institutional, Adoption and other Care-

Related records which catalogues available records appropriately and 
supports affected people in accessing all personal information held by the 
State. 

• Improved rights of access to the courts. 
• Establishment of a dedicated criminal investigations unit, and human rights compliant 

coroners’ inquests. 
• National education and memorialisation measures as part of a transitional justice 

process. This should include production of accurate education materials to support 
the primary and secondary school curriculum. It should also include production of 
training materials for State employees who work with survivors and affected people 
and adopted people. 

• Statutory rights to compensation, healthcare and all necessary rehabilitative supports 
for all affected people. In February 2021, Clann made an additional submission to OAK 
consulting, who are responsible for the government’s ‘restorative recognition 
scheme’.585 We endorse those recommendations. In particular: 

o Redress payments should not be made conditional on any waiver of rights. 
o Redress must be paid to all survivors and affected people of the institutions. 
o No time limits should apply to the application process. 
o Testimony must be permitted to ground an application, where relevant 

institutional records are absent, inaccurate or incomplete. 
• A comprehensive state apology to all those affected by the system of forced separation 

of single mothers and their children, which fully recognises the human rights 
violations perpetrated both within and outside the institutions. 

• State action to ensure that religious orders and church authorities participate in 
making reparations for the harm cause by churches’ treatment of single parents. 

• Repeal of the ‘gagging orders’ in section 28(6) of the Residential Institutions Redress 
Act 2002 and section 11(3) of the Commissions of Investigation Act 2004. 

  

 
585 Available here https://aran.library.nuigalway.ie/bitstream/handle/10379/16680/Clann-Project-
Submission-to-Oak-Consulting_31.3.21.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.  

https://aran.library.nuigalway.ie/bitstream/handle/10379/16680/Clann-Project-Submission-to-Oak-Consulting_31.3.21.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
https://aran.library.nuigalway.ie/bitstream/handle/10379/16680/Clann-Project-Submission-to-Oak-Consulting_31.3.21.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y


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8.NOTES ON METHODOLOGY 
 

8.1 PROCESS AND MOTIVATION 

 
We wrote this document collaboratively between March and July 2021. We received no 
external funding or payment for this work. Most of us are in salaried positions but others are 
precariously employed. Each of us took responsibility for a section of the document and 
produced at least two drafts of that section. Máiréad Enright and Aoife O’Donoghue acted as 
editors, co-ordinating the writing process. In the course of editing, the sections were 
rearranged for coherence and flow so that material originally written by one author is often 
combined with material originally written by another. We met online to discuss our 
arguments and approach and recorded our discussions to include all authors in the dialogue. 
Each of us read and commented on the whole document in draft. We circulated drafts to 
readers with expertise in law, history, research methods and public policy and to campaigners 
and legal professionals who have worked on relevant issues. Their names are listed in the 
Acknowledgments, except where they requested to remain anonymous. Our arguments 
incorporate their feedback to the extent possible 
 
Many of us are trained lawyers or academics who teach future legal professionals. Solicitors, 
judges and courtrooms appear frequently in the pages of the Report, and lawyers have been 
central to the work of Commissions and redress schemes. It is important that the legal 
community reckons with its involvement in past abuse, including by working today for fair 
and generous responses to affected people’s demands for justice. This document may be 
useful to legal educators who wish to include discussion of the institutions on their 
curriculum.  
 

8.2 WHAT ARE THE LIMITATIONS OF THIS DOCUMENT? 

 
The limitations of this new Executive Summary are partly related to those of the Report itself. 
The Report discusses just 18 institutions.586 Its engagement with discrimination is even more 
limited, drawing on just two. It is regrettable that the Commission did not request587 to modify 
its Terms of Reference to permit deep engagement with a wider range of organisations. The 
Report does not discuss the whole adoption system in Ireland from 1922-1998 and it does not 
address the experiences of people who gave birth in or were adopted from private nursing 

 
586 The Clann Project identified over 180 institutions, agencies and individuals involved in forced family 
separation; Clann Report 133. The Commission considered that the mother and baby homes 
investigated were the ‘main’ institutions of their kind. Commission of Investigation 2nd Interim Report. 
Available at: http://www.mbhcoi.ie/MBH.nsf/page/LPRNALCFND1238712- 
en/$File/MBHCOI%202nd%20Interim%20Report.pdf.  
587 S.6 Commissions of Investigation Act, 2004. 



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homes, maternity hospitals and agencies.588 Like the Report, therefore, this new document can 
only speak to and generalise from the harms that occurred in a small number of institutions. 
Our findings can only be indicative and not conclusive. In addition, our legal arguments are 
not worked out in as much detail as if we had written a longer Report. 
 
The Commission had access to a range of records which are not yet generally accessible to 
other researchers. Some are in private religious hands. We relied on accounts and 
interpretations of those records as presented in the Report. We do not know whether those 
accounts represent the full range of records in existence, and we do not have a detailed sense 
of whether essential records are missing. We note that the Commission relied on the co-
operation and goodwill of private data controllers in many respects, despite its statutory 
powers of entry and inspection.589 The methodologies used by the Commission to include or 
exclude interviewees for hearing by the Investigative Committee are unclear, as is their 
sampling approach. The Investigative Committee did not hear witnesses with experience of 
every institution under examination. For example, the main body of the Report does not 
include testimony from anyone who was at Denny House.  
 
The Report was published after some individuals identifiable from its text had reviewed it 
and made submissions on it in draft under s. 34 of the Commissions of Investigation Act. We 
cannot know what changes were made to the draft as a result of that process, whether records 
were kept of that process or how resulting conflicts were resolved.  
 
We are relying on a Report produced by a flawed Commission whose Commissioners have 
declined to answer questions about their working methods. While the Commission was 
sitting, the Clann Project590 raised serious concerns about its collection and treatment of oral 
evidence. These were also raised by people who gave evidence to the Commission. These 
concerns included that witnesses: 
 

• were not permitted to speak about issues arbitrarily deemed irrelevant to the 
Commission’s inquiry.591 

• were not permitted to give evidence in public,592 even though the Commission had the 
statutory power to allow that.593 The Commission did not permit any public hearings 
at all and did not give reasons for this decision.594 As a result, affected people could 

 
588 See Aitheantas’ statement here, noting that a more comprehensive investigation was required to 
meet international human rights standards; https://www.adopteerights.ie/2021/01/17/statement-
ref-mother-and-baby-homes-report-and-future-legislation-regarding-adoptee-access-to-birth-
information/. 
589 S. 28 Commissions of Investigation Act, 2004. 
590 Clann Report, Section 5. 
591 Testimony obtained at the Confidential Committee was summarised using standard forms which 
may have shaped interviewers’ sense of relevance, and prematurely imposed undisclosed standards 
on the testimony.  
592 Clann Report, 129-130. 
593 S. 11, Commissions of Investigation Act, 2004. 
594 Clann Report, 131. 

https://www.adopteerights.ie/2021/01/17/statement-ref-mother-and-baby-homes-report-and-future-legislation-regarding-adoptee-access-to-birth-information/
https://www.adopteerights.ie/2021/01/17/statement-ref-mother-and-baby-homes-report-and-future-legislation-regarding-adoptee-access-to-birth-information/
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not observe relevant hearings, or cross-examine people who gave evidence that 
directly undermined their own testimony. 

• were not given access to any documentary or oral evidence in the Commission’s 
possession that appeared to contradict their testimony.595 This knowledge inequality 
placed witnesses at a clear disadvantage when speaking about traumatic events which 
took place some decades ago. At the time the Commission’s hearings were held, 
Ireland had not reformed its laws to enable all people giving evidence to access their 
birth or other records,596 or the records of deceased family members, and this 
inevitably affected the nature of the testimony they could give.597 At the time of 
writing, many witnesses are receiving partial versions of their testimony for the first 
time and others have requested access to personal data currently in the Commission’s 
archive. It is possible that, had witnesses been given full access to relevant records, the 
evidence of human rights abuse contained in the Report would be even stronger. 

• were not given the opportunity to view and make submissions on a draft version of 
the Report as provided for in s.34 of the Commissions of Investigation Act, 2004,598 
even where they were identifiable from the final Report.599 Had this entitlement been 
respected, they could have corrected errors in the final Report. 600 
 

Many of these failings mean that the Commission’s investigation fell short of Irish, 
European601 and international human rights standards602 that apply to investigations of 
unlawful adoption,603 violations of the right to life604 and violations of the right to freedom 
from torture, inhuman and degrading treatment.605 In particular, the Commission’s 
procedures clearly (i) inhibited public scrutiny of its processes and (ii) inappropriately 
restricted affected people’s participation in its investigation.606 We cannot remedy the 
Commission’s failings here, but they have affected how we treat the evidence contained in the 
original Report.  
 
 

 
595 Clann Report, 131. 
596 The same obstacle applies when affected people attempt to access the courts.  
597 For detailed discussion of this issue see Clann Report, 85-106. Some witnesses would have had access 
to relevant information, because social workers or religious authorities had disclosed it on a 
discretionary basis, or because relevant information was shared within families.  
598 In the UK this is called Maxwellisation. 
599 As we note above in our foreword, in 2021 the High Court recognised that the Commission had 
breached this obligation in respect of eight survivors and affected people. 
600 A witness may be identifiable from details of their life story even where they are not directly named. 
601 The Commission is a public body for the purposes of the ECHR Act 2003. 
602 Clann Report 4.68 – 4.78. 
603 Jovanovic v. Serbia (App No 21794/08) ECHR 2003-II 147. 
604 Oneryildiz v Turkey (2005) 41 EHRR 20 para 93 (responsibility of public authorities); Salman v 
Turkey (2002) 34 EHRR 425, para 99 (deaths in custody); Fernandes v Portugal App No 43098/09 
(ECHR, 15 December 2015) (obligation exists even where the State is not directly responsible for the 
death) 
605 Premininy v Russia [2011] ECHR 252. 
606 See Clann Report, 120. 



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8.3 LANGUAGE 
 
Language has always been central to the regulation of single mothers and their children in 
Ireland. Although the older language of ‘sin’, ‘first and second offenders’ and ‘moral 
degeneracy’, ‘reform’ and ‘rescue’ has fallen out of use, many of those affected by the 
institutions are acutely conscious of the persistence of old ideas in more modern terminology. 
 
In 2023, researchers at NUI Galway completed a project examining stigmatising language 
historically used in respect of experiences in mother and baby homes and related institutions 
and to suggest alternatives. 607 This project was recommended by the Mother and Baby Homes 
Collaborative Forum in 2018. In keeping with the project’s recommendations, we have 
removed the term ‘unmarried mother’, which appeared several times in our Draft Alternative 
Executive Summary, and replaced it, in this version, with ‘single mother’. We recognise that 
this terminology may exclude married women who were affected by the issues discussed in 
this document. 
 
We are careful not to repeat harmful terminology even where it was in common use decades 
ago. We are also attentive to more recent expressions which tend to conceal the nature of the 
harms. For example, where possible, we refer to ‘mother and baby homes’ and ‘county homes’ 
as ‘institutions’, as a reminder that denial of or exclusion from a family home was central to 
women’s and children’s experiences. We do not use the word ‘residents’ to describe women 
and children who were often involuntarily detained in institutions. In this respect, our original 
approach is consistent with the recommendations of the NUI Galway project.608 
 
Where it is clear that an affected mother was a minor at the time an abuse occurred, we call 
her a ‘girl’, ‘teenager’, ‘adolescent’ or ‘child’ and not a ‘woman’. 
 
We also use the language of ‘natural mother’ rather than ‘birth mother’609 to recognise the 
wider emotional and caring attachment that women have to their children, beyond the 
physical experience of birth, even where they were permanently separated from one another. 
This is also the term used in Irish constitutional law, and is the term suggested by the Galway 
project.610 At the same time, we recognise that many women whose children were adopted 
prefer the term ‘mother’ without any qualifying adjective, or ‘first mother’. Others prefer the 

 
607 McGregor, C., Devaney, C., Buckley, S.A. (2023) Language, Terminology and Representation 
Relating to Ireland’s Institutions Historically Known as ‘Mother and Baby Homes’, ‘County Homes’ 
and related Institutions. Galway: UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre, University of Galway. 
608 McGregor, C., Devaney, C., Buckley, S.A. (2023) Language, Terminology and Representation 
Relating to Ireland’s Institutions Historically Known as ‘Mother and Baby Homes’, ‘County Homes’ 
and related Institutions. Galway: UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre, University of Galway, 
119. 
609 The Confidential Committee uses the compound words ‘birthmother’ and ‘birthfather’. 
610 McGregor, C., Devaney, C., Buckley, S.A. (2023) Language, Terminology and Representation 
Relating to Ireland’s Institutions Historically Known as ‘Mother and Baby Homes’, ‘County Homes’ 
and related Institutions. Galway: UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre, University of Galway, 
119. 



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term ‘birth mother/father/parent’ because they feel that it better reflects their perception of 
the relationship between the social experience and legal construction of adoption. 
 
We use ‘forced family separation’ as a general term to include the range of legal and illegal 
mechanisms by which single mothers were separated from their children and children were 
separated from siblings and wider kinship networks, including by adoption, fostering and 
boarding out. There are some difficulties here. First, some affected people may prefer not to 
use an umbrella term to describe a range of distinct experiences. Second, others may take issue 
with the phrase ‘family separation’ since the word ‘family’, for them and for a range of 
reasons, does not accurately describe their relationships to those from whom they were 
separated. Third, our use of the word ‘forced’ does not imply that women and children did 
not experience any other abuses where this separation was consensual. This document 
describes a range of other abuses which were not conditional on coerced adoption or fostering. 
Finally, some people may find the word ‘separation’ is inadequate to describe the violent loss 
of a family member, child or parent and may prefer the terms ‘child removal’, ‘child 
abduction’ or, in cases involving transnational adoption, even ‘rendition’.  
 
As far as possible, we avoid the word ‘illegitimate’, using ‘non-marital’ instead, or describing 
children as ‘the children of single mothers’. Again, this reflects the recommendations of the 
Galway Project.611 
 
When we use the term ‘baby’ or ‘child’ it is to refer to the treatment of babies and children in 
the past. Where those people are still alive today, they are adults and should be treated as 
such.  
 
 
8.4 VOICE 
 
The Commission was more than an exercise in legal fact-finding. Public inquiries often 
emphasise blame, or proving an offence, at the expense of making genuine space for affected 
people to speak to their experience, to be heard by the wider community and to contribute to 
public understanding of history. The Report includes evidence that institutionalised people 
complained of abuse at the time it happened but were not believed.612 For reasons discussed 
later in this section, many witnesses now feel that the Commission has not heard or believed 
them. In making direct use of their testimony, we aim to show that they have been heard. 
 
However, several witnesses have described the quotes and paraphrased fragments taken from 
their testimony as inaccurate, containing errors or omitting key facts. These problems are 
arguably attributable to the restricted format of the Commission hearings, which prevented 

 
611 McGregor, C., Devaney, C., Buckley, S.A. (2023) Language, Terminology and Representation 
Relating to Ireland’s Institutions Historically Known as ‘Mother and Baby Homes’, ‘County Homes’ 
and related Institutions. Galway: UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre, University of Galway, 
119. 
612 18.186; 20.155. 



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affected people from testing evidence that appeared to contradict their claims. We are, 
therefore, concerned that many of the excerpts published in the Confidential Committee 
Report may be unreliable and may not reflect the oral testimony actually given to the 
Confidential Committee. Therefore, although we draw extensively on the Confidential 
Committee Report in coming to our conclusions, we do not directly quote from the 
paraphrased statements which the Report presents as quotations from Confidential 
Committee testimony. A feminist approach to human rights abuse aims to centre the voices 
of those affected. We have attempted to follow that approach. However, the limitations of the 
Report itself and elements of the Commission’s methodological choices have badly affected 
our ability to do this.  
 
Many witnesses were surprised and disappointed that the Report did not present their 
testimony as coherent individual narratives but as paraphrased fragments. By contrast, oral 
and written testimony provided by those who gave evidence to the Investigative Committee 
is presented in longer form, and ‘largely set out in their own words’, at the end of some of the 
chapters giving short histories of each of the 18 institutions considered by the Commission. 
The Northern Ireland Research Report on Mother and Baby Homes preferred longer 
narratives to quotations in its presentation of oral evidence. The authors of the Northern 
Ireland report note that fragmented quotations – of the type published by the Confidential 
Committee – may be difficult to process or contextualise, so that they appear less credible than 
other forms of evidence, including the accounts of authority figures.613 It was not possible for 
us to do something similar because the Commission has not published full transcripts of 
witness evidence.614  
 
In the weeks and months since the Report was published, affected people and advocacy 
groups have worked to recover and share full accounts of the experiences shared with the 
Commission. We encourage anyone reading this document to take time to engage with them.  
 

• Clann Project – Selection of Witness Statements submitted to the Commission 
http://clannproject.org/statements/ 

o For quotes from a wider range of witness submissions, and an accompanying 
detailed human rights analysis see the Clann Report (2018) 
http://clannproject.org/restorative-recognition-scheme/clann-project-
recommendations-on-restorative-recognition-scheme/  

 
613 Leanne McCormick and Sean O’Connell with Olivia Dee and John Privilege, Research Report on 
Mother and Baby Homes in Northern Ireland https://www.health-ni.gov.uk/publications/research-
report-mother-and-baby-homes-and-magdalene-laundries-northern-ireland  (Hereinafter ‘Northern 
Ireland Report’)8.4.  
614 The Commission had planned to destroy all audio recordings of witness testimony, but backup 
copies were preserved, following application of campaigner and political pressure. 
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40232390.html  The Independent Inquiry into Child 
Sexual Abuse uses ‘pen portraits’, and publishes longer anonymous accounts from its Truth Project 
online with witnesses’ consent. https://www.truthproject.org.uk/about-us/asking-for-your-consent.  

http://clannproject.org/statements/
https://www.health-ni.gov.uk/publications/research-report-mother-and-baby-homes-and-magdalene-laundries-northern-ireland
https://www.health-ni.gov.uk/publications/research-report-mother-and-baby-homes-and-magdalene-laundries-northern-ireland
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• Caroline O’Connor’s story is told in Catriona Crowe, ‘The Commission and the 
Survivors’ (2021) Dublin Review of Books https://thedublinreview.com/article/the-
commission-and-the-survivors/  

• The Tuam Oral History Project http://www.nuigalway.ie/tuam-oral-history/   
o Nochtaithe – a response to the project by Drama and Theatre Students, NUI 

Galway http://www.nuigalway.ie/tuam-oral-history/nochtaithe/  
• Abbey Theatre, Home: Part One https://www.abbeytheatre.ie/whats-on/home-part-

one/  
• National Concert Hall, Breaking the Silence - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-

Vj7wmTvdls 
• AMRI, Shadow Report to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial 

Discrimination (2019) 
https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CERD/Shared%20Documents/IRL/INT_CE
RD_NGO_IRL_37383_E.pdf 8-11 

• Noelle Brown’s response to the Commission Report 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2mkZLZK8zU  

• Siobhán Kilroy’s story of appearing before the Confidential Committee 
https://tortoiseshack.ie/ep-469-extend-the-commission-siobhans-story/  

• Irish Times Inside Politics Podcast, ‘Mother and Baby Homes Report’ (with Elizabeth 
Coppin and Caelainn Hogan), 16 January 2021, 
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/inside-politics/inside-politics-mother-
and-baby-homes-report-1.4459641?mode=amp  

• Irish Times Women’s Podcast, ‘Ep 441: Sealing the Records: Maeve O’Rourke & Mary 
Harney’, October 2020, https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-irish-times-
womens-podcast/id1040117877?i=1000495309503  

• Irish Times Women’s Podcast, ‘Ep 466: The Commission of Investigation into Mother 
and Baby Homes’ (with Rosemary Adaser, Noelle Brown and Máiréad Enright), 15 
January 2021, https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/the-women-s-
podcast/the-irish-times-women-s-podcast-ep-466-the-commission-of-investigation-
into-mother-and-baby-homes-1.4458448?mode=amp  

• Mother and Baby Homes in Ireland – What Comes Next? Discussion at Galway 
International Arts Festival, September 12 2021 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-9m1Ubfdwk  

• Writing Irish Institutions, Museum of Childhood Ireland, September 12 2021 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE7SXrUytCg&t=626s  

• RTE Radio 1, Morning Ireland, 13 January 2021, 
https://www.rte.ie/radio1/morning-ireland/programmes/2021/0113/1189425-
morning-ireland-wednesday-13-january-2021/  

• RTE Radio 1, Today with Claire Byrne, ‘Mother and Baby Homes’ (with Noelle 
Brown), 13 January 2021, 
https://www.rte.ie/radio/radioplayer/html5/#/radio1/21892875  

https://thedublinreview.com/article/the-commission-and-the-survivors/
https://thedublinreview.com/article/the-commission-and-the-survivors/
http://www.nuigalway.ie/tuam-oral-history/
http://www.nuigalway.ie/tuam-oral-history/nochtaithe/
https://www.abbeytheatre.ie/whats-on/home-part-one/
https://www.abbeytheatre.ie/whats-on/home-part-one/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Vj7wmTvdls
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Vj7wmTvdls
https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CERD/Shared%20Documents/IRL/INT_CERD_NGO_IRL_37383_E.pdf
https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CERD/Shared%20Documents/IRL/INT_CERD_NGO_IRL_37383_E.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2mkZLZK8zU
https://tortoiseshack.ie/ep-469-extend-the-commission-siobhans-story/
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/inside-politics/inside-politics-mother-and-baby-homes-report-1.4459641?mode=amp
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/inside-politics/inside-politics-mother-and-baby-homes-report-1.4459641?mode=amp
https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-irish-times-womens-podcast/id1040117877?i=1000495309503
https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-irish-times-womens-podcast/id1040117877?i=1000495309503
https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/the-women-s-podcast/the-irish-times-women-s-podcast-ep-466-the-commission-of-investigation-into-mother-and-baby-homes-1.4458448?mode=amp
https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/the-women-s-podcast/the-irish-times-women-s-podcast-ep-466-the-commission-of-investigation-into-mother-and-baby-homes-1.4458448?mode=amp
https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/the-women-s-podcast/the-irish-times-women-s-podcast-ep-466-the-commission-of-investigation-into-mother-and-baby-homes-1.4458448?mode=amp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-9m1Ubfdwk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE7SXrUytCg&t=626s
https://www.rte.ie/radio1/morning-ireland/programmes/2021/0113/1189425-morning-ireland-wednesday-13-january-2021/
https://www.rte.ie/radio1/morning-ireland/programmes/2021/0113/1189425-morning-ireland-wednesday-13-january-2021/
https://www.rte.ie/radio/radioplayer/html5/#/radio1/21892875


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• Second Captains, ‘Episode 1943: A Momentous Week for Irish Society, Fionn’s Story’, 
15 January 2021, https://www.secondcaptains.com/2021/01/15/episode-1943-a-
momentous-week-for-irish-society-fionns-story/  

• RTE Radio 1, Liveline, ‘Mother & Baby Homes’, 18 January 2021, 
https://www.rte.ie/radio/utils/share/radio1/21894752  

• RTE Radio 1, Drivetime, ‘Mother and Baby Homes Discrimination’ (with Jude Hughes 
of the Association of Mixed Race Irish and Dr Philomena Mullen), 18 January 2021, 
https://www.rte.ie/radio/radioplayer/html5/#/radio1/21894770  

• Irish Times Women’s Podcast, ‘Mother and Baby Homes Commission Member Speaks 
Publicly’ https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/the-women-s-
podcast/the-irish-times-women-s-podcast-ep-506-mother-and-baby-homes-
commission-member-speaks-publicly-1.4583421  

• Irish Times, Caelainn Hogan, 'Mother and baby homes report contradicts survivors’ 
lived experiences' https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/mother-and-baby-homes-
report-contradicts-survivors-lived-experiences-1.4457411?mode=amp  

• Mother and Baby Homes In Ireland | What Comes Next?: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-9m1Ubfdwk. 

• Writing Irish Institutions: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE7SXrUytCg&t=626s 

• Jacinta O’Connell Girls Like You: The Long Road Back from Bessborough (Red Stripe Press 
2021) 
 

 
8.5 TESTIMONY BEFORE THE CONFIDENTIAL COMMITTEE: LAW AND ORAL 

TESTIMONY 
 
The majority of witnesses (532 with direct or family experience of the institutions) who gave 
evidence to the Commission615 were heard in private at the Confidential Committee. 
However, the Report’s findings frequently contradict significant testimony heard by the 
Confidential Committee. For example, the Commission found ‘no evidence’ that women were 
forced to enter institutions by church or State authorities; ‘no evidence’ of gross abuse 
equivalent to that suffered in industrial schools; ‘no evidence’ that women were denied pain 
relief in labour; ‘no evidence’ that children were injured in vaccine trials; ‘no evidence’ that 
women did not fully consent to their children’s adoptions; ‘no evidence’ of discrimination 
against disabled or mixed-race children in adoption decision-making and ‘very little evidence’ 
of physical abuse. 
 

 
615 The main body of the Report makes some reference to ‘witnesses’, ‘former residents’ and their 
‘evidence’. However, these terms seem to refer to the proceedings of the Investigative Committee.  

https://www.secondcaptains.com/2021/01/15/episode-1943-a-momentous-week-for-irish-society-fionns-story/
https://www.secondcaptains.com/2021/01/15/episode-1943-a-momentous-week-for-irish-society-fionns-story/
https://www.rte.ie/radio/utils/share/radio1/21894752
https://www.rte.ie/radio/radioplayer/html5/#/radio1/21894770
https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/the-women-s-podcast/the-irish-times-women-s-podcast-ep-506-mother-and-baby-homes-commission-member-speaks-publicly-1.4583421
https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/the-women-s-podcast/the-irish-times-women-s-podcast-ep-506-mother-and-baby-homes-commission-member-speaks-publicly-1.4583421
https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/the-women-s-podcast/the-irish-times-women-s-podcast-ep-506-mother-and-baby-homes-commission-member-speaks-publicly-1.4583421


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Confidential Committees are useful provided that they inform an inquiry’s eventual 
conclusions.616 However, while we were drafting this document it became apparent through 
the intervention of Professor Mary Daly that the Commission gave little or no weight to 
Confidential Committee evidence in drawing its final conclusions.617 Although the former 
chair of the Commission, Yvonne Murphy, has subsequently written to the Oireachtas 
Children’s Committee to say that this testimony was ‘very much taken into account’, she did 
not give any examples of how this was done. 618 Thus, it appears that the only personal 
testimony directly relied on was that given to the Investigative Committee, orally or as a 
sworn affidavit.619  
 
The Investigative Committee received 32 affidavits and held 194 hearings, at which 64 former 
‘residents’ and 30 advocacy groups, gave evidence. Of the 64 residents, 45 had been invited 
on the basis of their testimony to the Confidential Committee, though the Report does not 
explain how they were selected. Just 19 witnesses were permitted to access the Investigative 
Committee directly.620  
 
The Oireachtas did not intend that evidence given to the Confidential Committee would carry 
little or no weight when it came to producing the Commission’s general findings. The 
Commission was instructed to produce a report of a ‘general nature’ based on testimony 
heard by the Confidential Committee. The reference to ‘general nature’ merely suggests that 

 
616 The Confidential Committee is comparable to the Truth Project of the Independent Inquiry into Child 
Sex Abuse (England and Wales), but that Inquiry uses research based on the Truth Project to inform its 
conclusions on designated general research questions. See further https://www.iicsa.org.uk/key-
documents/11685/view/truth-project-research%3A-methods-full-.report.pdf. Australia’s Royal 
Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse heard from thousands of people at 
confidential private sessions. These people are not treated as ‘witnesses’ to the Commission. They were 
not cross-examined or required to give evidence on oath. De-identified narratives were published with 
the speaker’s consent. The Royal Commission confirms that information gathered in private session 
informed all of its work, and private session evidence is extensively cited in its reports. See further 
https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/sites/default/files/final_report_-
_volume_5_private_sessions.pdf especially (2.2). 
617 Dr Deirdre Foley and Professor Ian McBride in conversation with Professor Mary Daly', Oxford 
University on 2nd June 2021 http://clannproject.org/commission-report/oxfordtranscript/ especially 
pp. 12-13, 21-22, 26-27.  
618 https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/full-letter-sent-to-oireachtas-by-former-
members-of-mother-and-baby-homes-commission-1.4590705. There are three possibilities. 1) Most 
people who spoke to the Investigative Committee had already spoken to the Confidential Committee, 
so the Confidential Committee may have been used as a mechanism to sift evidence that would later 
be tested at the Investigative Committee. 2) As indicated in Prof. Daly’s transcript at p. 26, researchers 
working on other chapters of the Report may have looked at the Confidential Committee’s evidence in 
order to guide their research. 3) The Commission also references the views of ‘former residents’ in  
passing in its Recommendations chapter, but it is not clear that this is a reference to the Confidential 
Committee. 
619 That testimony is often paraphrased, though the Report says that it is ‘largely set out in [the 
witnesses’] own words’; 19.170. Some witnesses have said that these paraphrases misrepresent their 
original testimony. 
620 Confidential Committee, 10. For further discussion of the Commission’s procedures see Clann 
Project archive of correspondence with the Commission http://clannproject.org/visit-contribute-to-
the-archive/correspondence-with-the-commission-of-investigation/  Confidential Committee, 10  

https://www.iicsa.org.uk/key-documents/11685/view/truth-project-research%3A-methods-full-report.pdf
https://www.iicsa.org.uk/key-documents/11685/view/truth-project-research%3A-methods-full-report.pdf
https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/sites/default/files/final_report_-_volume_5_private_sessions.pdf
https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/sites/default/files/final_report_-_volume_5_private_sessions.pdf
http://clannproject.org/commission-report/oxfordtranscript/
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/full-letter-sent-to-oireachtas-by-former-members-of-mother-and-baby-homes-commission-1.4590705
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/full-letter-sent-to-oireachtas-by-former-members-of-mother-and-baby-homes-commission-1.4590705
http://clannproject.org/visit-contribute-to-the-archive/correspondence-with-the-commission-of-investigation/
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the Commission could not use evidence given in the Confidential Committee to make a 
finding that directly identified an individual wrongdoer, religious order or institution. The 
Terms of Reference then provided that the Commission ‘may, to the extent it considers 
appropriate, rely upon [that report of a general nature drawn from Confidential Committee 
evidence] to inform’ its investigations. The Commission was entitled to find that some 
elements of the evidence heard by the Confidential Committee were not persuasive, so that it 
was not ‘appropriate’ to draw on that evidence in its main Report.621 However, its Report does 
not explain why certain testimony given to the Confidential Committee was not found to be 
useful in determining key issues of public interest, or why it seemed unsafe to take that 
evidence into account in any visible way. There are several possibilities, but all are open to 
critique.  
 
First, some caution is required in investigating claims of past abuse under Irish law. The 
Commission was not empowered to make findings of guilt or innocence, or of civil liability 
that might directly affect non-State actors.622 However, it is obvious that the interests of 
identifiable individuals are engaged by a Commission of Investigation. Alleged 
wrongdoers623 and claimants have a constitutional right624 to their good name.625 This entails 
rights to natural justice and fair procedures, and entitlements to be protected from the 
disadvantages caused by ‘lapse of time’626 including death of key witnesses, fading of memory 
or loss or destruction of records. The Commission was required to take these matters into 
account in designing its processes and procedures.627 These issues did not arise in respect of 
the bulk of the Commission’s work.628 By and large, the Commission’s Terms of Reference629 
encouraged it to make findings as to systemic issues – ‘what happened and why’ – rather than 
identifying named wrongdoers630 or specific incidents.631 The Commission provided an extra 

 
621 The Commissions of Investigation Act 2004 provides at s. 32 that where a Commission considers that 
the facts relating to a particular issue have not been established, ‘it may indicate its opinion as to the 
quality and weight of any evidence relating to the issue’. 
622 Participation in a redress scheme is a matter of moral obligation rather than legal liability. 
623 Survivors and affected people have the same statutory rights. 
624 A person’s own evidence to a Commission of Investigation is not admissible in civil or criminal 
proceedings against them; s. 19, Commissions of Investigation Act, 2004. However, the Commission 
could report a suspected serious crime to the authorities, based on evidence heard by the Confidential 
Committee. 
625 Re Haughey [1971] IR 217.  
626 On delay in international human rights law, see Clann Report 126. 
627 For a copy of the Commission’s Rules and Procedures see http://clannproject.org/wp-
content/uploads/MBHCOI_Rules-Procedures.pdf.  
628 That is to say that most of the Commission’s findings are not about the commission of serious abuses 
or criminal offences by named individuals/members of named religious orders in named institutions. 
Contrast Michael Murray and David Gibson v Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, Minister for 
Education Minister for Education and Science, Ireland and the Attorney General [2004] IEHC 102.  
629 The Commission also had the power to request an amendment of its Terms of Reference under s. 6 
of the Commissions of Investigation Act 2004. 
630 It was also empowered to omit identifying information from its Report where necessary in the 
interests of justice; section 32(3), Commissions of Investigation Act, 2004. 
631 The exception is probably the vaccination trials. Contrast with, for example, the Commission to 
Inquire into Child Abuse, which had a clear statutory mandate to make findings of this kind under 
Section 13, Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse Act, 2000. 

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layer of protection for any accused parties by anonymising witnesses or institutions in 
publishing any evidence given to the Confidential Committee.632 Regard for the rights of 
alleged wrongdoers did not require the Commission to disregard Confidential Committee 
evidence as such. Finally, under s. 34 of the Commissions of Investigation Act, identifiable 
individuals were entitled to review and make submissions on the Report.633 
 
Second, the Confidential Committee was established to allow people to give testimony ‘as 
informally as is possible in the circumstances’.634 It is important to be sensitive to the needs of 
people who are affected by trauma, shame and stigma.635 The obligation to treat witnesses 
sensitively does not imply the obligation to ignore their testimony. By declining to directly 
draw on their testimony, the witnesses were disadvantaged by a process which may have 
been intended to ‘spare’ them an adversarial hearing.636 They were not in a position to make 
an informed choice about whether to speak to the Investigative Committee,637 make a written 
submission to the Investigative Committee, or speak the Confidential Committee.638 The 
opportunity to testify to the Commission was not widely advertised.639 Witnesses were not 
informed that evidence given to the Confidential Committee would not influence the 
Commission’s findings to any significant degree.640 The Commission did not proactively assist 
them to submit evidence to the Investigative Committee in the form of a sworn affidavit.641 
Their right to participate in the fact-finding process was not respected as it should have been. 
The Commission had significant discretion to formulate its own rules and procedures.642 
When the Commission realised that the vast bulk of testimony had been taken by the 
Confidential Committee, it should have acted to address any unfairness. 
 
Third, the Commission may have had concerns about the validity of evidence given 
informally about events which happened decades ago. It may have decided that evidence 
given to the Investigative Committee was more reliable for certain purposes because it had 

 
632 Confidential Committee Report  12. The Gárdaí have confirmed that alleged perpetrators are so 
effectively anonymised that it would not be possible to begin effective prosecutions on the basis of 
information contained in the Report without further information https://www.thejournal.ie/mother-
and-baby-home-garda-appeal-5423400-Apr2021/  Confidential Committee Report 12. 
633 See Prof Mary Daly’s description of this process at http://clannproject.org/visit-contribute-to-the-
archive/correspondence-with-the-commission-of-investigation/ p 3. 
634 Article 3 http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2015/si/57/made/en/print.  
635 See more detailed discussion by the Steering Committee of the Oral History Network of Ireland here 
https://oralhistorynetworkireland.ie/statement-re-mother-and-baby-homes-commission-june-2021. 
636 We note that proceedings in the Investigative Committee need not have been adversarial. An 
inquisitorial model might have been more appropriate. 
637 Clann Report, 132. 
638 As discussed by Catriona Crowe at https://thedublinreview.com/article/the-commission-and-the-
survivors/. 
639 Clann Report 134. 
640 See Clann Project letter to Commission on failure to advertise the Investigation Committee 
http://clannproject.org/wp-content/uploads/Letter-from-Hogan-Lovells-to-MBHCOI_09-08-
2016.pdf 
641 The Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry has adopted this process, as has the New Zealand Royal 
Commission of Inquiry into abuse in care https://www.abuseincare.org.nz/library/v/119/practice-
note-3-witness-statements.  
642 Section 15, Commissions of Investigation Act, 2004. 

https://www.thejournal.ie/mother-and-baby-home-garda-appeal-5423400-Apr2021/
https://www.thejournal.ie/mother-and-baby-home-garda-appeal-5423400-Apr2021/
http://clannproject.org/visit-contribute-to-the-archive/correspondence-with-the-commission-of-investigation/
http://clannproject.org/visit-contribute-to-the-archive/correspondence-with-the-commission-of-investigation/
http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2015/si/57/made/en/print
https://oralhistorynetworkireland.ie/statement-re-mother-and-baby-homes-commission-june-2021
http://clannproject.org/wp-content/uploads/Letter-from-Hogan-Lovells-to-MBHCOI_09-08-2016.pdf
http://clannproject.org/wp-content/uploads/Letter-from-Hogan-Lovells-to-MBHCOI_09-08-2016.pdf
https://www.abuseincare.org.nz/library/v/119/practice-note-3-witness-statements
https://www.abuseincare.org.nz/library/v/119/practice-note-3-witness-statements


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been tested by questioning or given under oath, whereas evidence given to the Confidential 
Committee was not ‘tested’ in this way. However, cross-examination is not the only way to 
establish credibility. The Commission could have given some weight to evidence heard by the 
Confidential Committee where that evidence was repeatedly corroborated by other 
testimony.643 It could also have acted to invite more witnesses to make submissions to the 
Investigative Committee. The Terms of Reference also empowered the Commission to 
identify any issues ‘warranting further investigation in the public interest’.644 In instances 
where a key question could not be answered on the available evidence, it was free to suggest 
what sort of further investigation might produce the necessary information.645  
 

8.6 OUR APPROACH TO ORAL EVIDENCE 

 
An acknowledgment at the end of the Confidential Committee Report says:  
 

in all groups, the depth and honesty of what witnesses revealed to the Committee 
about what had happened to them having left the mother and baby homes, was 
startling. 

 
We begin from the presumption that all witnesses gave honest and authentic testimony. We 
have seen no reason to do otherwise. We also recognise that without the constant pressure 
put on the Government by Clann and other survivor organisations, testimony would not have 
been taken at all by the Confidential Committee.  
 
We have made extensive use of Confidential Committee evidence to inform our general 
findings. This document makes frequent reference to the Report and works in dialogue with 
it.646 We also make use of the evidence that the Commission itself used, but our approach 
means that we draw different conclusions. 
 
At the same time, we recognise that the defects in the Confidential Committee testimony 
discussed at (8.5) mean that in places, where we rely on that testimony, we may be 
reproducing errors and omissions taken from the Report itself. We recognise that several 
people who testified to the Confidential Committee later found that elements of their 
testimony had been downplayed or omitted or misrepresented. Not quoting the testimony 
(8.6) only goes so far.  

 
643 On questioning and corroboration as relevant factors see by analogy s. 5(4) Commission to Inquire 
into Child Abuse Act, 2000. 
644 http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2015/si/57/made/en/print. 
645 We also note that the Confidential Committee Report was originally to be delivered in 2016.  This 
was done because the number of people who came to the Commission was larger than expected. See 
2016 Interim Report https://assets.gov.ie/26423/a59153f1fdd44776a5a4c69a83b3354b.pdf.  
646 Our references to paragraphs of the original Report are not comprehensive – failure to reference a 
particular page or paragraph does not indicate dismissal of the evidence recounted in that part of the 
Report. 

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The original Executive Summary summarises findings which are specific to individual 
institutions. The limitations of the evidence presented in the Report are such that we have not 
been able to do the same, especially because the Investigative Committee did not hear witness 
testimony in respect of every one of the 18 institutions, and the Confidential Committee report 
does not identify relevant institutions. Local projects, such as the Tuam Oral History Project 
may be better placed to do this kind of work. 
 
In many places, testimony given to the Confidential Committee mirrors and corroborates 
evidence accepted by the Investigative Committee. It is often appropriate, therefore, to come 
to stronger versions of the original Report’s weaker findings. Often, inquiries of this kind647 
adopt the civil standard of proof648 making general findings of fact on the balance of 
probabilities, and we have done so where the evidence allows it.649 We have been flexible in 
our approach to the standard of proof where necessary.650 For instance, a lower standard651 
may be appropriate in investigating mass human rights violations because witnesses may be 
inhibited from testifying in large numbers by shame, fear or stigma or because the nature of 
the abuse is such that there are few surviving witnesses and no meaningful or trustworthy 
written record. United Nations commissions and missions have generally adopted 
‘reasonable suspicion’ or ‘reasonable grounds to believe’ as the applicable standard.652 We are 

 
647 It is important to note that findings of state liability here are in respect of indirect involvement, not 
direct killing/torture etc. Thus the standard is not ‘overwhelming’ or ‘clear and convincing’ evidence. 
648 We have found it difficult to identify the general standard(s) of proof the Commission used in 
coming to its findings. A “standard of proof” is a legal way of explaining how certain we must be before 
we can conclude that an allegation is proven. We can imagine the standard as falling somewhere along 
a spectrum between absolute certainty and pure conjecture. The Commission makes various findings 
of fact – both specific and general - on the basis of possibility (e.g. in the Executive Summary 13, 48, 64, 
67, 68 and ‘impossible to prove or disprove’ 73) probability  (e.g. in the Executive Summary 10, 12, 30, 
31, 43, 44, 45, 46, 49, 50, 56, 59, 60, 63, 67, 68, 69, 74 and 76), reasonable assumption, (e.g. Chapter 29 11 
and 16), presumption,( ‘presumably’ is used over 100 times in interpreting evidence across the Report) 
or simply, on the basis of what the evidence does or does not ‘suggest’, ‘show’ or ‘indicate’ (e.g. in the 
Executive Summary p9, 22, 23, 29, 36, 45, 47, 49, 50, 51, 52, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 64, 65, 66, 68, 72, 73, 74, 75). 
This suggests that the Commission adopted a flexible standard of proof, even if it did not spend time 
in unpacking that standard.  
649 Often colloquially understood as something between 51% and 60% likelihood. More evidence 
supports the conclusion than contradicts it. It is proven ‘on the preponderance of the evidence’. 
650 Lower standards of proof are often used in administering redress schemes. For example, an applicant 
may not be required to prove that they were personally subjected to a particular form of abuse, if they 
were present in an institution were abuses of that kind were endemic, provided that there is no strong 
contradictory evidence available to the decision-maker. However, here we are interested in the 
evidentiary standards for assessing whether or not particular abuses were common in a long-standing 
system at a given point in time. 
651 Evidence may also be useful to a Commission even where it is not strong enough to meet the civil 
standard. For example, if there is a ‘real possibility’ that something occurred, the Commission may 
want to bear it in mind in making recommendations for the future See 
e.g.https://www.childabuseinquiry.scot/resource-centre/standard-of-proof-chairs-decision/. 
652 OHCHR, Commissions of Inquiry and Fact-Finding Missions on International Human Rights and 
Humanitarian Law: Guidance and Practice, 62–63. This is a less demanding standard than "balance of 
probabilities". Applying this standard means acknowledging that other conclusions are possible, but 
that there is a 40-50% likelihood that one particular conclusion is correct. Drawing a conclusion on the 
 



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not adjudicating on the ‘truth’ of any individual narrative presented in testimony to the 
Commission.  
 
In deciding how to engage with statements made to the Confidential Committee, we have 
been influenced by the Northern Ireland Research Report into mother and baby institutions, 
workhouses and Magdalen laundries, published in January 2021. This report was not 
produced by a Commission of Inquiry. However, it provides a helpful defence of the 
credibility of oral history evidence.653 It makes five observations, which have informed our 
practice here: 
 

1. An automatic preference for archival and documentary evidence654 may reinforce 
unequal power relations, by allowing the voices of those who had power in the past 
to drown out the voices of those who had none.655 This is a significant problem with 
the Report precisely because it did not make full use of the bulk of oral evidence 
available to it.656 This preference is difficult to justify in circumstances where records 
are known to be missing or incomplete.657 

2. Archival evidence is not necessarily more reliable than oral history evidence. For 
example, the Report makes extensive use of past officials’ impressions658 of single 
mothers in Chapter 8, while discounting living women’s account of equivalent 
experiences. Institutional records are socially constructed, produced for distinct 
purposes and reflect the authors’ interpretation and memory of events. An ordinary 
person’s memory of their own experience, in some circumstances, may be franker than 
a specially prepared institutional account.659 This is true of people who spent time in 
institutions as younger women or as children, as well as of religious or state agents.  

3. Accounts of personal experience may corroborate one another; as where similar 
themes recur across multiple testimonies.660 Those interviewed may also differ in their 
evaluation of similar experiences; some people may have a positive recollection of a 

 
basis of "reasonable suspicion" still requires a holistic assessment of a substantial body of credible 
objective evidence, including repeated and consistent reports of harm. The government may always 
decide to pursue further action on the basis of the Commission’s conclusions. 
653 See also https://oralhistorynetworkireland.ie/statement-re-mother-and-baby-homes-commission-
june-2021.  
654 Surprisingly, the Commission Report engages in detail with evidence drawn from newspaper, 
magazine and radio interviews with and about people who were in the institutions e.g. 12.15-12.19; 
18.178 ;22-12.30.  
655 Northern Ireland Report 18. 
656 The testimony of nuns who worked at four institutions is reproduced at some length in the main 
Report. This includes Sister Sarto’s perspective on the adoption process, which is not directly put into 
conversation with women’s accounts of that process. In places, women’s claims are put to the nuns and 
sometimes they are directly rebutted 18.239; 20.175. The majority worked in those institutions from the 
late 1960s onwards 1980s. One nun interviewed worked at Bessborough in the 1940s. Only the names 
of the Good Shepherd sisters who worked at Dunboyne are anonymised. 
657 See Professor Mary Daly describing gaps in the available records 
http://clannproject.org/commission-report/oxfordtranscript/ at 22 and 25 
658 At 8.1 the Report discusses these in the context of the ‘absence of mothers’ voices’ from the records. 
See a similar remark on boarded out children at 11.141. 
659 Northern Ireland Report 17. 
660 Northern Ireland Report 18. 

https://oralhistorynetworkireland.ie/statement-re-mother-and-baby-homes-commission-june-2021
https://oralhistorynetworkireland.ie/statement-re-mother-and-baby-homes-commission-june-2021
http://clannproject.org/commission-report/oxfordtranscript/


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practice which many others characterise in negative terms. These differences may 
simply reflect the complexity of people’s memories; different perspectives do not 
diminish the validity of individual views.  

4. Oral history evidence is not unreliable merely because aspects of an account are vague 
or inconsistent. Understandably, people’s accounts of traumatic experiences often 
have these qualities.661 Therefore we do not draw negative inferences from reported 
gaps in individual accounts,662 and we do not seek to contradict any individual 
witness’s evidence.663 

5. Contrary to the Commission’s assertion that witness evidence was ‘contaminated’ by 
‘meetings with other residents and inaccurate media coverage’,664 oral history 
evidence is not less credible merely because it draws on collective or public narratives, 
such as those developed in advocacy groups. An individual should be permitted to 
draw on wider cultural scripts in explaining their own direct experience, without this 
undermining the credibility of their testimony.665 We have not disregarded testimony 
merely because it reflects the arguments of an advocacy group, or indeed the 
arguments of a religious order. We have also drawn extensively on the submissions of 
the Clann Project to the Commission, because their submission is grounded in the 
testimony of affected people.  

 
 
8.7 A FEMINIST RIGHTS-BASED ANALYSIS  
 

Why human rights? 
 
It is often said that we must evaluate past injuries according to the laws of the time. However, 
domestic law is not the only relevant source of past standards. We recognise that it is often 
the case that the law of a society in which serious human rights abuses occur will tolerate 
those abuses, and sometimes directly facilitate them. That a particular action was designated 
legal or illegal by domestic law at a given point in time does not, by itself, tell us whether that 
action was harmful. A rights-based approach is appropriate as a supplement to analysis of 
past domestic law.666 Emphasising rights violations also directs attention to people’s 
experiences. Instead of a national, regional or institution-level analysis, it can encourage a 
‘listening’ approach which emphasises the details of the harms done to living people. 

 
661 Northern Ireland Report 30. It is important to note that even patchy or partial oral testimony can 
contribute to the historical record if it is skilfully brought into conversation with other sources.  
662 Contrast the Report’s approach at 32.164 on trauma and women’s ‘denial’ around forced adoption. 
663 Contrast e.g. 13.148 contradicting a witness’s evidence that she had a symphysiotomy as ‘highly 
unlikely’, without explaining why. 
664 Confidential Committee Report 12. The Ryan Report  http://www.childabusecommission.ie/rpt/  
[5.29-5.40] made similar observations but was more specific about the origins of its concerns, noting 
that ‘contamination’ was also a feature of evidence given by members of religious orders. 
665 Northern Ireland Report 18. 
666 See further, Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, Submission (20149 
https://www.ihrec.ie/download/pdf/ihrec_designate_submission_on_mother_baby_commission_i
nvestigation_june_2014.pdf.  

https://www.ihrec.ie/download/pdf/ihrec_designate_submission_on_mother_baby_commission_investigation_june_2014.pdf
https://www.ihrec.ie/download/pdf/ihrec_designate_submission_on_mother_baby_commission_investigation_june_2014.pdf


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Human rights standards and a transitional justice approach.  
 
In preparing this document, by contrast, we recognise that the Commission was not a court, 
and that any redress offered to affected people is ex gratia; not determined by formal legal 
obligation. The scope of any transitional justice response is determined by political decisions 
taken in the present. The Commission could have moved beyond minimum established legal 
standards in attributing responsibility for wrongdoing. The point of transitional justice 
processes is precisely to recognise that harmful actions tolerated in the past are deserving of 
reparation today.  
 

Why feminism? 
 
The interpretation of the Report presented here is legally rigorous and plausible, and we have 
been transparent about our methodological commitments. A feminist legal approach is 
appropriate667 because the institutional structures examined in the Report were established 
and maintained to regulate and contain the sexual and reproductive lives of ‘troublesome’ 
women and girl and their children. Many of the injuries experienced in the institutions are 
profoundly gendered. They include systemic denial of reproductive autonomy, shaming of 
perceived sexual transgression, forced separation from family, deliberate discrimination 
against non-marital families, and violent or degrading treatment in pregnancy and before and 
after birth.  
 
We have also taken account of some distinctive feminist approaches to legal analysis. These 
include: 

• An intersectional approach that it is attentive to the ways in which race, class, religion, 
ethnicity and physical and psychosocial disability intersect with gendered exclusions. 

• Analysing reproductive harms in terms of reproductive justice, rather than only of 
reproductive rights. This means paying attention to the structures and resources 
needed to found and raise a family in dignity, as well as to those needed to avoid 
pregnancy.  

• Attention to agency and autonomy. In particular, recognising that oppressed people 
can resist State power, and that social norms are reinforced and remade in interactions 
between people. 

• A suspicion of simplistic public/private divides, recognising that human rights also 
extend into ‘private’ homes and institutions.  

• Attention to the gendered politics of responsibility, especially in the regulation of the 
family and of sexuality. 

• Recognising that women who have been leaders in government, in society and in their 
professions have also been complicit in and benefited from gendered human rights 

 
667 See UNHCHR, Integrating a Gender Perspective into Human Rights Investigations, 
https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3802044?ln=en 63 advising that a gender perspective should be 
integrated throughout the investigation. 

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abuses. The Report documents women in medicine, academic research, social work, 
religious orders and the civil service who contributed to punitive institutionalisation 
and forced family separation. 

 

8.7 LAW IN CONTEXT 
 
In the Report, legal analysis is often highly formalistic and detached from lived experience. 
For example, we did not identify any instances in which the Report offers a direct legal 
analysis of recurring issues arising from witness’s accounts of their experience of adoption 
law. 668 Non-enforcement of existing law is a repeated theme in the Report, particularly in 
relation to adoption consent, and inspection of places where children were living and dying. 
In this new Executive Summary, where possible, we set the law in the context of reported 
lived experience. 
 
We also try, where possible, to emphasise connections between systems. The women and 
children who were in institutions and their families often also had experiences, including 
repeated experiences, of abuses in other State-run institutions, including the industrial schools 
and the 'mother and baby homes'.  
 

8.8 LAW AND TIME 
 
This new Executive Summary is attentive to relationships between law and time. This means 
being attentive to the relationships between experiences of abuse and formal legal change. We 
do not assume that the presence of a new law on the books meant an immediate or sudden 
change in women’s and children’s circumstances – this is clear, for example, from our analysis 
of the impact of Single Mothers Allowance. At the same time, it is clear that the State‘s 
enforcement or creation of new legal models made a concrete difference to women and 
children, and to the lives they had after they were separated.  
 
We are also cautious of linear and progressive narratives of legal change. Law reform may be 
regressive, ineffective, inadequate or have unintended consequences.  
 
In addition, although the Commission did not address this issue in detail, we are conscious 
that harms perpetrated in the last century have continuing impacts on families and 
communities today. The intergenerational impacts of forced family separation may be 
experienced by grandchildren and great-grandchildren, even if they themselves were not 
direct witnesses to abuses in Ireland’s residential institutions for single mothers and their 

 
668 Chapter 32 does report some witnesses’ accounts of consent to adoption, in Section E, ‘Adoptions in 
Practice’, but in very broad terms. 



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children. As such, it is important to offer a human rights analysis which understands that 
harms which have not been adequately investigated or redressed are ‘continuing harms’.669 
 
Finally, although the Report is framed as dealing with ‘historic’ abuse, most of the harms it 
documents took place within living memory. One of the institutions discussed – the Castle – 
closed in 2006.670 
 
Past human rights standards  
 
The Report does not pursue a rights-based analysis of the evidence before it.671 By avoiding a 
human rights analysis, the Report minimises harms which (i) violated constitutional and/or 
human rights standards at the time they occurred and/or (ii) are recognised as rights 
violations today.  
 
Human rights standards changed significantly over the course of the period 1922-1998. In this 
document, we identify abuses which were clear rights violations at the time they took place, 
and we particularly emphasise older case law to this effect.  
 
The 1937 Constitution emphasises rights. In incorporating human rights provisions into the 
Constitution (a relatively unusual practice at the time) the State was consciously setting 
standards of protection for its citizens. Abuses taking place before the European Convention 
of Human Rights was adopted by the Council of Europe in 1953 cannot be considered 
breaches of that Convention. However, breaches taking place from 1953 onwards cannot be 
disregarded. A more serious difficulty emerges in respect of international human rights 
instruments because even where Ireland signed relevant conventions in the early 1970s, 672 it 
did not ratify them until the 1980s and 1990s, or even later. By this time most institutions were 
closing or closed, though the systems of which they were a part remained in place in altered 
form.673 Nevertheless, Ireland was a member of the United Nations when earlier Declarations 
of human rights principles were made,674 that were later embodied in more effective and 
enforceable instruments. It is not unreasonable to take account of emerging common 
international standards in evaluating past wrongdoing, while at the same time recognising 
that the State was often reluctant to incorporate these standards into its own laws. 

 
669 See further O’Rourke, M. Prolonged Impunity as a Continuing Situation of Torture or Ill-Treatment? 
Applying a Dignity Lens to So-Called ‘Historical’ Cases. Neth Int Law Rev 66, 101–141 (2019). 
https://doi.org/10.1007/s40802-019-00127-5  
670 See Chapter 26. 
671 See generally Chapter 36. 
672 For example (and this is not an exhaustive list), Ireland signed the International Covenant on Civil 
and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1966. 
They came into force in 1976. Ireland did not ratify them until 1989. Ireland signed the Convention on 
the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women in 1973. It came into force in 1976 and 
Ireland ratified it in 1985.  
673 See the Report’s ‘Timelines’, which seems to encourage readers to draw the conclusion that the 
institutions closed before major human rights provisions become relevant. 
674 Including the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, 1924; the United Nations Charter in 1945; the 
Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948; the Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1959. 

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It is important to remember the role of power relations in the institutional recognition of 
rights. Some rights; for example, the right to freedom from detention, were established earlier 
in the development human rights law or constitutional law. By contrast, injuries to women 
and children have often not been recognised as legal wrongs deserving of concrete protection, 
and marginalised people have often been deprived of the resources necessary to bring their 
claims before the courts. As such, serious harms can go unrecognised by law for a long time.675 
If we simply note that the State took a long time to incorporate human rights standards into 
its own laws, without saying more, then we are excusing the State’s past refusal to challenge 
and reform harmful and abusive practices. 
 
Present human rights standards and dealing with past harm.  
 
Establishing the human rights of affected people in the present is not always contingent on 
proving that the State recognised the harm they suffered as human rights abuse at the time it 
occurred. For example, today adopted people have an established right to identity (4.1), and 
therefore they have rights of access to personal data, even if the law in force during their 
childhood provided for closed adoption. The State is also responsible for the continuing 
effects of some past violations.676 For instance, by limiting access to personal data, today’s 
Irish law has exacerbated some of the effects of past coerced family separation. Finally, the 
State may be obliged to investigate injuries which were not formally recognised as torture or 
inhuman and degrading treatment at the time they occurred.677 The Commission’s processes, 
and its approach to evidence, should have reflected the State’s obligations to affected people 
under today’s law.  
 

FURTHER RESOURCES 
 

• Counselling Services 
o Connect Counselling: https://connectcounselling.ie/  

• Survivor Campaigns 
o Adoption Rights Alliance: https://adoption.ie/help  
o Clann Project: https://clannproject.org/about/  

 
675 The Commission itself is not always so strict about time periods. For example, it calls the State’s 
failure to address the status of illegitimacy until 1987 ‘an egregious breach of human rights’ (Chapter 
36 29) even though it was 1987 before the European Court of Human Rights recognised it as such 
Chapter 36 15-16). 
676 Clann Report 125-128. 
677 Coppin v. Ireland (available at: https://www.hoganlovells.com/en/news/un-torture-committee-
delivers-preliminary-judgment-against-ireland-deciding-to-hear-magdalene-laundries-case-in-full).  
See 6.2 -6.3 in which a complaint relating to treatment between 1964 and 1968 was admitted even 
though Ireland did not ratify the Convention until 2002. See also Clann Report 127-128 on pre-
ratification violations in international human rights law. The Commission acknowledges this point at 
Chapter 36 9-10 but does not reflect on the potential application of those principles to its own work. 
Article 13 of the Commission’s Terms of Reference refer to the need for ‘prompt and thorough’ 
investigation in accordance with the State’s obligations under international human rights law.  

https://connectcounselling.ie/
https://adoption.ie/help
https://clannproject.org/about/
https://www.hoganlovells.com/en/news/un-torture-committee-delivers-preliminary-judgment-against-ireland-deciding-to-hear-magdalene-laundries-case-in-full
https://www.hoganlovells.com/en/news/un-torture-committee-delivers-preliminary-judgment-against-ireland-deciding-to-hear-magdalene-laundries-case-in-full


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o Justice for Magdalenes Research https://jfmresearch.com/  
• Patricia Carey, Special Advocate for Survivors 

o https://www.specialadvocate.ie/  
• Advice on Accessing Personal Information 

o Mother and Baby Homes Information Hub 
https://datasubject.ie/mbh/resources/  

• Information for Irish survivors and affected people in Britain 
o Irish in Britain https://www.irishinbritain.org/what-we-do/policy-and-

representation/irish-survivors-information  
 

 

https://jfmresearch.com/
https://www.specialadvocate.ie/
https://datasubject.ie/mbh/resources/
https://www.irishinbritain.org/what-we-do/policy-and-representation/irish-survivors-information
https://www.irishinbritain.org/what-we-do/policy-and-representation/irish-survivors-information

	Foreword to the Revised Text: June 2025.
	Foreword to the Draft Alternative Executive Summary: July 14th 2021
	Acknowledgments
	1. Introduction
	1.1 Human Rights: Summary of Findings

	2. Single Motherhood in Context
	2.1 Concealment
	2.2 Impacts of the Law on Illegitimacy
	2.3 Natural Fathers
	2.4 Profit and Responsibility

	3. In the Institutions
	3.1. Governance and Responsibility
	3.2 Social Welfare
	3.3 Unpaid Labour
	3.4 Admissions and Detention
	3.5 Admissions and Sexual Abuse
	3.6 Inhuman and Degrading Treatment
	3.7 Deaths and Burials
	3.8 Obstetric Violence
	3.9 Vaccine and Milk Trials

	4. Family Separation375F
	4.1 Harms of Family Separation
	4.2 Domestic Adoption
	4.3 Intercountry Adoption

	5. Discrimination
	5.1 Race
	5.2 Disability
	5.3 Travellers
	5.4 Religion

	6. Conclusion
	7. Clann Recommendations for Action
	8.Notes on Methodology
	8.1 Process and Motivation
	8.2 What are the Limitations of this Document?
	8.3 Language
	8.4 Voice
	8.5 Testimony before the Confidential Committee: Law and Oral Testimony
	8.6 Our Approach to Oral Evidence
	8.7 A Feminist Rights-based Analysis
	Why human rights?
	Human rights standards and a transitional justice approach.
	Why feminism?

	8.7 Law in Context
	8.8 Law and Time
	Past human rights standards
	Present human rights standards and dealing with past harm.


	Further Resources

