LONDON (AP) – The prime minister of Ireland issued a formal apology to the state on Wednesday to the thousands of single women and their children who suffered pain, shame and stigma in church-run institutions, saying their government was determined to start correcting the country’s mistakes.
Prime Minister Micheal Martin’s apology came a day after the final investigation report said 9,000 children died in 18 homes of mothers and babies – which housed women and girls who became pregnant outside of marriage – during the 20th century. The investigation was part of an evaluation process in Ireland, predominantly Roman Catholic, where the institutions run by the church used to be linked to a history of abuse.
Martin said that Ireland should recognize the scandal as part of its national history and “show our deep remorse”. He apologized on behalf of his government for the “profound and generational error” that affected mothers and their babies who ended up in institutions.
“They shouldn’t be there,” he said in the Irish parliament. “The state has failed you, mothers and children in these houses.”
Martin said it was deeply distressing that the authorities at the time were aware of the very high mortality rate in homes, but did not appear to have intervened. The report said that 15% of all children in the household died from illnesses and infections like stomach flu, almost double the national infant mortality rate.
Martin added: “We must learn the lesson that institutionalization creates structures of power and abuses of power, and should never be an option for our country under any circumstances.”
Church-run homes in Ireland housed orphans, single pregnant women and their babies for most of the 20th century. Mothers were abandoned by their families and hid in shame, and many of the children were separated from their mothers for adoption.
Institutions came under intense scrutiny after historian Catherine Corless, in 2014, tracked the death certificates of nearly 800 children who died in a mother and baby home in western Ireland – but could only find a record of a child’s burial .
Investigators later found a mass grave containing the remains of babies and young children in an underground sewer structure on the grounds of the house, which was run by an order of Catholic nuns and closed in 1961.
The commission of inquiry said that about 56,000 single mothers and about 57,000 children lived in the homes it investigated. Most were admitted in the 1960s and early 1970s.