Director appointed to oversee excavation of Tuam Mother and Baby Home site

The Minister for Children has appointed a director to oversee the excavation and recovery of children’s remains at the site of a former Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Co Galway.

Daniel Mac Sweeney, a former International Committee of the Red Cross envoy, will lead the independent office as the director of authorised intervention for Tuam.

He was appointed following a recruitment campaign ran through the Public Appointments Service.

He will be responsible for ensuring the remains are re-interred in a respectful and appropriate way.

A key first priority for the director will be to engage with relatives, survivors and former residents of the Tuam institution.

The Department of Children said work is ongoing to establish core staffing and administrative structures, and to appoint an advisory board to support Mr Mac Sweeney in his work.

Minister Roderic O’Gorman said he is pleased with the appointment.

“Daniel will oversee the long-awaited intervention at the site of the former Mother and Baby institution in the town,” he said.

“He has extensive expertise and experience contributing to, leading and overseeing humanitarian programmes in the international arena, including in relation to missing persons and identification programmes involving the use of DNA, which will be invaluable in the Tuam director role.”

Funding of almost seven million euro has been made available for the 2023 costs of the multi-annual intervention.

Asked if the announcement is an attempt to isolate focus on infant deaths in Tuam rather than other institutions, Mr O’Gorman said: “We’ve given this agency very significant powers in terms of the ability to excavate, to exhume remains, and to analyse remains, and indeed give individualised reports on each set of remains where possible in terms of potential cause of death and the like.

“We also removed a prohibition that had existed in the earlier legislation in terms of any engagement from the coroner.

“So, we have both created a highly-specialised agency and given it the resources to undertake its work, but we’ve also opened it up and its findings up to other apparatuses of the State as well.”

He said this is what he was “asked to do” by the relatives.

“We’ve been able to address the key concerns that did exist about the original draft,” the minister added.

Separately, the Government has appointed former general secretary of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation Sheila Nunan to act on behalf of the minister in leading the process of negotiation with all religious bodies who had a historical involvement in Mother and Baby and County Home Institutions.

The purpose of her role is to undertake ongoing negotiations with the religious congregations, lay Catholic organisations and church leaders who were involved with the institutions, with a view to securing a financial contribution towards the cost of the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme.

The department said: “Recognising the importance of these negotiations to survivors and to the public, the minister believes that engaging this bespoke expertise is essential to advancing the process in the most advantageous manner.”

The Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme will provide financial payments to an estimated 34,000 people and a form of enhanced medical card to an estimated 19,000 people at a cost of about 800 million euro.

It will be the largest scheme of its kind in the history of the State in terms of numbers of beneficiaries.

Asked if the current surplus in the State finances should lead to an expansion of the Mother and Baby Home redress scheme for those below the six-month eligibility period, Mr O’Gorman said he is advancing the scheme as initially outlined.

He said: “I know from speaking to survivors that they’re eager to be able to access the scheme.

“There are 34,000 former residents and survivors who will be able to access this scheme and receive payments.

“19,000 will be able to receive medical cards and we are conscious, I suppose, of the age and infirmity of some of those who will be able to make application on the scheme, that’s why there’s a provision under the scheme that the independent office can prioritise applications from people who are maybe particularly elderly or who are unwell.

“That’s why we need to get this legislation passed by the end of this Dail term.”

The minister refused to put a figure on what he expects religious bodies to pay as it would “undermine the entire negotiating process”.

He said the Government is working to get the Institutional Payment Scheme passed through the Dail and Seanad.

“It’s really important that we get it passed because we are also working to put in place the admin infrastructure and we want, by the autumn, to be in a position where people can start making applications to it.”

Mr O’Gorman also rejected the suggestion that the appointment of Ms Nunan to lead negotiations is an attempt to “pass the buck” from Government.

He said: “The final decision on this will be made by Government.

“We agreed today that any agreements that she achieves will be brought back to Government for final sign-off, so it’ll be a Government decision ultimately.”