Mayo memorial proposal for Tuam home's missing children

THE 208 Mayo babies and children missing from the Tuam Mother and Baby Home are set to be remembered on a new memorial.

Mayo County Council has been requested to include their names on a previously proposed memorial remembering the people who spent time in homes.

Consultation will take place with families and survivors about what is appropriate.

Councillor Ger Deere brought a notice of motion before the council asking that the children's named be recorded on a monument as an additional step to the previous proposal for a memorial for those who went through the homes.

He explained how he was involved in the Light of Love memorial walk from Islandeady to Tuam this year where the 208 names of the unaccounted for babies and children from Mayo were read out.

Councillor Deere was given the name of Mary Daly, two months old.

With the enormity of hearing those names, it should not be once in a blue moon that we hear their names, said Councillor Deere. There should be a fitting memorial with their names on it in the county.

"They deserve that dignity, to be remembered," he said.

If the previously proposed memorial was going ahead, he would ask that their names be written on it.

Councillor Donna Sheridan, who proposed the memorial to the women who attended Tuam between 1930 and '60, supported her colleague, maybe at the site of the old workhouse.

She agreed the children should be remembered on maybe a joint memorial. There is money in this year's council budget for it.

Out of respect for the families and survivors, they should be consulted on how best they think they should be remembered. It should be led by the survivors and their families, she said.

Councillor Martin McLoughlin also supported the motion, saying for too long these people have been forgotten and neglected.

The proposal will now go before the council's corporate policy group to initiate the consultation process with all stakeholders before it comes back before the council.