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FORMER MINISTER FOR children Katherine Zappone has called on the government to pause the planned development of apartments on the site of a former Mother and Baby home in Cork.

Earlier this month, An Coimisiún Pleanála granted permission to private developer Estuary View Enterprises to build 106 apartments on the site at Bessborough. The decision was made following an appeal.

The home was run by the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary and operated between 1922 and 1998.

The Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes’ report found almost 20,000 women and children were admitted during that time

Only 64 have known graves, meaning the burial place of 859 children is unknown.

Some 31 women died in the mother and baby home, but the commission only found death registration records for 29 of the women.

Speaking with RTÉ’s This Week programme, Zappone said that her concerns originated from the report published by the Commission.

She says her concerns over the proposed development of apartments originate from her time dealing with the commission while she was minister for children.

“I received the burials report from the commission of investigation, and in that report they identified that there were modest efforts to ascertain the location and the scale of the burial at Bessborough,” she said.

“Forensic archaeologists basically assessed the visible landscape, but determined that there were no visible features that indicated there was something, or that human remains may be buried underneath,” she said.

Zappone feels as though the search at Bessborough was not sufficient, nor was it similar to the assessment of the site that was completed in Tuam.

“What happened in Tuam indeed was something which is called a geophysical survey, a ground-penetrating radar that goes underneath and has a much better sense of being able to determine if there could be remains there,” she said.

“So it was done in Tuam, it wasn’t done in Bessborough, so I’m saying I don’t think that it’s sufficient.”

She says that this geophysical survey should be done now before any further development, as 859 children died in Bessborough whose graves are currently unknown.

“The careful, honest and moral thing to do is to look properly before we build,” she said, adding: “Why would the State not want to do something about this?”

Zappone has already submitted a letter of appeal, dated 13 April, to An Comisiún Pleanála.

In the letter, she expressed her “passionate belief in the human dignity of the 19 mothers and 859 infants associated with Bessborough whose burial places are not known”.

In its decision to grant planning permission for the apartments, An Coimisiún Pleanála said there was “no evidence that there are unrecorded burials in the area proposed for the subject development”.

However, it did admit that “the history of burials on these lands is incomplete due to the lack of records during the period of use” of Bessborough as a mother and baby home.

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