Next week, beneath the quiet skies of Tuam, shovels will meet soil. It will be no ordinary act of excavation—it will be an act of love, of memory, of finally listening to voices long silenced. The ground at the former Mother and Baby Home, where 796 children were interred without names, markers, or dignity, will open not only to archaeologists, but to a nation’s grief.
These were not faceless children. They were Martins and Ellens, Sarahs and Peters. Names that call to mind corner-shop owners, schoolteachers, local GAA coaches, kind uncles, charming aunts—people with layers, flaws, stories. Not the names of infants. Names full of weight and expectation. They sound like lives half-glimpsed, lives that never got the chance to fill their names with meaning.
These children should now be old. Their names should be murmured softly on local radio, mourned respectfully on rip.ie, whispered about over ham sandwiches and strong tea in living rooms cleared for the wake. They should be remembered fondly or fiercely—community pillars, stubborn neighbours, generous souls. Instead, they were left beneath the surface of a repurposed septic tank, voiceless in death as they were in life.
What begins next week is not just forensic science. It is a national reckoning. For nearly a century, the voices of these children were muffled under a shame we tried too hard to ignore. But now, with the slow and sacred work of exhumation, we begin the long-overdue process of honouring them. The soil will yield more than remains—it will give us back their stories.
To the families who have waited, sometimes without hope, for this moment: this is for you. To the mothers who were told to forget, and the siblings who never knew they had another name in their family tree: this is for you. May the act of remembering be a balm, however small, for wounds long left open.
To the teams of archaeologists, anthropologists, technicians and the newly established Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention: we entrust you with a task of enormous delicacy and humanity. You are caretakers of our lost children. Your work is not just technical—it is spiritual, emotional. You are lifting them out of the dark, into light.
And at the centre of this story, there is a woman who refused to look away. Catherine Corless. A local historian who gave 796 children back their names, and with those names, their personhood. What she did was beyond remarkable—it was an act of pure moral clarity. Let there be a scholarship in her name, a perpetual honour for the quiet, determined work of telling the truth. She showed us that history is not a relic—it is a responsibility.
The town of Tuam, so rich in story, music, and my own memory, now holds within it both heartbreak and hope.
These children were denied the ordinary miracles of life: scraped knees, first loves, grey hairs. But now, they will be remembered. They will be named. They will be mourned properly. And maybe, just maybe, the country that forgot them can finally begin to remember what it means to be humane.
Let us walk gently into this process. Let us whisper their names with care. Let us pass the stories, like dry cake and warm tea, from hand to hand, so they may never be forgotten again.
Let the work begin.
