"They're going to issue an apology tomorrow, sure why would they issue an apology when we haven't even read the report?" Ms Larkin said. 

"What good is an apology? I think they should apologise in six months' time when we have some knowledge of what the report is about."

RTÉ, 12-1-2021

13-1-2021

Patsy McGarry

Irish Times

 

The children of unmarried women ‘boarded out’ to farms from Mother and Baby Homes were often worked hard from a very young age and were open to abuse, both physical and sexual

In 1957 a notice in the Tuam Herald read: Children to be Boarded Out. It invited applications from women for girls under seven and boys under five years of age and detailed the maintenance allowance to be paid for their upkeep.

The children were in Tuam Mothers and Baby Home, an institution run by the Bon Secours sisters from 1925 to 1961, and the practice of ‘boarding out’ sted deserted children were, in effect, fostered out to families who wmmed from the workhouse system in the 19th century where poor, orphaned anere paid to keep them. 

It’s unknown exactly how many children were ‘boarded out’ from Mother and Baby Homes and industrial schools in Ireland as adoption did not become legal until 1952, but historians put it at thousands.