Mounting anger as survivors demand Government action.

A WEST Cork councillor who was born in Bessborough said she is ‘saddened’ by the decision to allow 106 apartments to be built on the site of the former mother and baby home.

The council’s decision to grant permission to Estuary View Enterprises was appealed to An Coimsiún Pleanála.

But the appeals board gave the green light for the controversial development late last week.

Survivors, campaigners and politicians have called on the State to use a Compulsory Purchase Order to acquire the land, to prevent the apartments being built on what they say is a sacred burial site.

Cllr Marie O’Sullivan (FG) said that as someone who was born in Bessborough and adopted, it is something she feels strongly about.

‘I was very lucky,’ she told The Southern Star.

‘I had a really positive adoption experience and wonderful parents, but that doesn’t take away from what so many other people went through or the hurt and trauma connected with places like Bessborough.

‘We are a nation that places huge importance on remembrance and commemoration, and I think we need to be very sensitive when it comes to places that hold so much pain and mean so much to so many people.’

Cllr O’Sullivan is one of three Cork County Councillors who have gone public about their connection to the notorious mother and baby institution. Former county mayor Cllr Mary Linehan Foley and Cllr Dominic Finn were also adopted from there. They previously raised a motion at a council meeting calling for a memorial to be erected at the site to remember the children who died there and were buried in unmarked graves.

Bessborough was run as a mother and baby home by the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary from 1922 to 1998. Of 923 recorded infant deaths at the home, there are burial records for only 64, leaving the whereabouts of 859 childrens’ remains unknown but believed to be in a mass unmarked grave on the site.

‘I honestly think it is really sad that this decision has been made,’ said Cllr O’Sullivan. ‘Maybe now we need to look to the Government to step in and secure part of the grounds so that there can be a fitting and permanent place of remembrance for the women, children and families affected.

‘We can’t change what happened in the past, but we can make sure it is remembered with dignity and respect.’

Speaking in the Dáil on Tuesday, Cork South West TD and Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns described the decision to grant planning permission for the apartments as ‘disgusting’.

‘This is so fundamentally wrong,’ she said. ‘I don’t believe this build will go ahead. I know people who will chain themselves against the gates before diggers roll in to build, to concrete over land where there are potentially hundreds of burials.’ She too called on the Government to purchase the land.