Misogyny & Women's Health in Ireland

Abstract

in 2012, Catherine Corless, a local historian from Co. Galway, published an article titled ‘The Home’ in the annual Journal of the Old Tuam Society. By that time she had discovered that 796 infants and children died while at St Mary’s mother and baby home, run by the Bon Secours nuns, in Tuam, but there was no record of burials. The story would later make international headlines when the babies’ bodies were found stuffed in a sewerage system on the grounds of the home. The following year, in 2013, it was announced that a new National Maternity Hospital would be built on the site of St Vincent's University Hospital in Elm Park in Dublin and rented to the State via a lease by the nuns! The Religious Sisters of Charity order owns the land on which the new hospital is to be built at a cost of around €1 billion of public money. You couldn’t make it up!