It is important to highlight that the records of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation are already fully available to survivors seeking their own information.
The arrangements for preserving the records compiled by a Commission of Investigation in the course of its work are prescribed in Section 43(2) of the Commissions of Investigation Act 2004. This provides that, prior to its dissolution, a Commission must deposit all records with the prescribed Minister. On the expiry of a 30-year period thereafter, such records will be transferred to the National Archives and access is regulated in accordance with the National Archives Act, 1986.
Commission archives deposited with the Minister under the 2004 Act are subject to a general principle of confidentiality. Section 11(1) specifies that a Commission shall conduct its investigation in private unless certain conditions for hearing evidence in public are met. Section 11(3) of the 2004 Act prohibits any person (including the Minister) from disclosing or publishing any evidence given or the contents of any document produced by a witness while giving evidence in private, with very limited exceptions. The general principle of confidentiality that applies to a Commission’s archives has been upheld in the courts.
In 2020 the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes informed the Department that it had created a database in relation to the mothers and children who passed through 15 of the 18 institutions under investigation. The Commission indicated it believed it would be a valuable resource to assist information and tracing services for mothers and children, but it also felt it was compelled by law to permanently redact much of the valuable information within.
To ensure that this database information could be preserved and be available to survivors directly, the Government brought forward legislation - the Commission of Investigation (Mother and Baby Homes and certain related Matters) Records, and another Matter Act 2020. This Act provided for the deposit of the Commission's database with Tusla, in addition to transferring a copy of this database, together with the Commission's entire archive of records, to the Minister for Children.
Legislation enables the Department to process subject access requests from people who wish to seek access to personal information that may be contained within the database and the broader Commission archive.
Following engagement with the Office of the Attorney General, the Data Protection Commissioner and independent experts in the area of GDPR, the Department published information for individuals including its privacy notice indicating what personal data the Department holds and how it processes it, and a guide on how to request access to personal information (Subject Access Request (SAR)). A dedicated phone line (01-2376001) provides information for callers on the SAR process, and information on this is also regularly communicated to survivors and former residents via quarterly updates pursuant to the Government Action Plan for Survivors. More information on how to access personal data which may be held in the records of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation can be found here - https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-children-disability-and-equality/organisation-information/transfer-of-records-from-the-mother-and-baby-homes-commission-of-investigation/
For the avoidance of any doubt, it is important to clarify that the Commission was not in possession of original records and, therefore, no original records were impacted by the provisions in the 2004 legislation. State records remain in the possession of the relevant statutory body and appropriate access is regulated in accordance with relevant statute.
One of the seven major commitments in the afore-mentioned Government's Action Plan for Survivors and Former Residents of Mother and Baby and County Home Institutions was access to identity information. The Birth Information and Tracing Act 2022 provides a full and clear right of access to birth certificates and birth and early life information for all persons who were adopted, boarded out, nursed out or the subject of an illegal birth registration, or who otherwise have questions in relation to their origins. The 2022 Act enables Tusla to process the Commission database for the purpose of responding to requests from relevant persons for personal information. To date, under the Birth Information and Tracing Act, Tusla and the AAI have responded to over 17,700 requests for identity information.
Another of the major commitments in the Action Plan is the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme which provides payments and health benefits to eligible survivors of 44 Mother and Baby or County Home institutions that were identified by the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation as having a main function of providing sheltered and supervised ante and post-natal facilities to single mothers and their children. The Department of Children, Disability and Equality is responsible for overseeing the administration of the Scheme in line with the legislative scope and intent of the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme Act, as enacted by the Oireachtas.
The Action Plan also outlines a commitment to establish a national memorial and records centre. The National Centre for Research and Remembrance, which will be located in Seán MacDermott Street, Dublin 1, will stand as a site of conscience to honour equally all those who spent time in Industrial Schools, Magdalen Laundries, Mother and Baby and County Home Institutions, Reformatories, and related institutions, and all those who have lived experience of Ireland’s historical adoption and boarded out systems. The National Centre will stand as part of our national institutions and will comprise:
a museum and exhibition space, the development of which will be led by the National Museum of Ireland;
• a research centre and repository of records related to institutional trauma in the 20th century, which will form part of the National Archives; and
• a garden space for reflection and remembrance.
The broader issue of access to records relating to Ireland's legacy of institutional trauma, including inquiry records, is being addressed as part of the development of the National Centre. A dedicated Legal and Legislative Subgroup has been established under the auspices of the National Centre Steering Group to advance this important, sensitive and complex work.
Finally, in relation to burial sites, the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes had wide ranging powers and conducted very extensive inquiries, searches and test excavations at institutional sites in an effort to locate the burial places of children. Through this work the Commission was able to confirm the presence of children’s remains at the site of the former institution in Tuam that were interred in a repugnant manner. Despite extensive efforts, the Commission did not identify similarly abhorrent burials at the other institutions it investigated.
In response to the situation in Tuam, in 2022 the Government directed the establishment of the Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention, Tuam, to manage and oversee the excavation, recovery, analysis, identification (if possible) and reburial of the children’s remains at the site. The intervention is being carried out under the provisions of the Institutional Burials Act 2022, which provides for the appointment of a Director where the Government is satisfied that burials have taken place and where there is evidence that those burials are manifestly inappropriate.
The Tuam Director was appointed in 2023. Preliminary groundworks were completed at the site at the end of 2024 and the excavation commenced in July 2025. Since starting the excavation, the Director has published six technical updates. These are all available on his Office’s website: www.odait.ie.
One of the tragic aspects of the Commission’s findings in relation to Bessborough is the uncertainty regarding the burial place of many children who were resident there. The Commission carried out assessments and surveys of the site and spoke to people with information about burials but it was unable to find any evidence of burials of the children who died at Bessborough in the grounds. As no evidence of locations was found, the Commission did not consider it feasible to excavate the full available site, which amounts to 60 acres, or indeed the former 200 acre estate, parts of which have now been built on.
The Commission used its investigative powers to conduct a forensic archaeological investigation of the children’s burial ground at Sean Ross Abbey. It did this in response to information that it had received that the graveyard, when still in use, had drainage works inserted through it and that, based on this assertion, there may be no remains at the site and it may never have been used as a graveyard. Site surveys, reviews of planning files and an independent drain inspection was followed by a forensic-standard test excavation, with multiple trenches opened in areas across the site where anomalies were identified by the surveys. The investigation found that coffined infant burials were located across the designated burial ground and that these had not been impacted by drainage works. The Commission concluded that no further investigation was warranted. The report of the investigation, which details the objectives, methodology and results, was published in full in the Commission’s final report, with the survey and drain inspection reports included as appendices.
