Tuam – What The Evidence Tells Us About Children Who Died – Failure Of The Irish State

109 Sets of Institutional Remains Have Now Been Recovered

The continuing forensic excavation at the former ‘Mother and Baby Home’, in Tuam, has once again brought one of the darkest chapters in modern Irish history, into sharp focus.
On October 2nd 2026, the Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention, Tuam (ODAIT) confirmed that a further 10 sets of infant remains had been recovered. Evidence of coffins was present in all 10 cases.
This brought the total number of institutional human remains recovered during the current excavation to 109 individuals.

Of these, 77 infants were recovered from one excavation area, 32 from another, while disarticulated infant remains have also been recovered from the subterranean chamber. Scientific examination and attempts at identification are continuing.

But this excavation raises an even more difficult question. Why did so many children die at Tuam in the first place?
Hundreds of children died. The Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes established that 978 children associated with Glenamaddy and Tuam died between 1921 and 1961. Most were extremely young.
Around 80% of those for whom age information was available died before reaching their first birthday. The great majority of deaths occurred before 1950.
The causes recorded on death certificates included prematurity and congenital debility, pneumonia and other respiratory infections, whooping cough, tuberculosis, influenza, gastroenteritis, meningitis, measles, diphtheria, congenital abnormalities and convulsions.
These were genuine and often deadly illnesses in an age before modern neonatal intensive care, widespread antibiotics, sophisticated treatment of dehydration and comprehensive vaccination programmes.

It would therefore be historically inaccurate to claim that every child who died at Tuam, died directly because of neglect.
But it would be equally misleading to suggest that these deaths can simply be explained away as the unfortunate reality of childhood illness in early twentieth-century Ireland. The mortality at Tuam was frequently far higher than the already high Irish national rate.

Years of Extraordinary Mortality
Some years were particularly devastating. Historical records show major clusters of deaths during outbreaks of measles, whooping cough and respiratory disease.
During the 1940s the situation became especially serious. An official inspection in 1947 recorded infant mortality at the home ranging between approximately 23% and 34% during the years 1943 to 1946. The national infant mortality rate was itself distressingly high at this time. In 1943, for example, it was approximately 83 deaths per 1,000 live births. Yet mortality among infants at Tuam remained dramatically higher.
The Commission therefore could not simply attribute the difference to general poverty or poor medical knowledge throughout Ireland. Something about the institutional circumstances placed these children at additional risk.

Officials Knew There Was a Serious Problem.
This is where the question of responsibility becomes particularly important. An inspector visiting Tuam in April 1947 found 271 children and only 61 mothers living there. She specifically warned that there was a constant risk of infectious disease. Most importantly, there was no isolation unit. Children arriving at the institution could therefore introduce infections into a large population of vulnerable infants and young children living together. The inspector believed the high death rate required investigation.
At the same time, she reported that the Bon Secours Sisters caring directly for the infants appeared attentive and that the children received good immediate care. Both findings need to be acknowledged.

There is no sound basis for claiming that every death resulted from deliberate mistreatment by individual Sisters.
But there is substantial evidence of a wider institutional system that failed to protect vulnerable children adequately.

Galway County Council Had Direct Responsibility
Tuam was not simply a private religious institution operating independently of the State. Galway County Council owned and controlled the home.The local authority was responsible for major decisions and for maintenance and improvements to the property. Public money supported the institution and aspects of its medical care.
This becomes particularly significant because the physical conditions were poor and infection control was inadequate.
The Commission found serious shortcomings in the buildings and sanitation and concluded that Galway County Council had failed adequately to maintain and improve the institution. Remarkably, the council itself sometimes held meetings at the Tuam Children’s Home. Yet despite extraordinarily high infant mortality, the surviving council records contain remarkably little evidence of a determined investigation into why so many children were dying.

The Central State Also Knew.
Responsibility extended beyond Galway County Council. The extraordinary mortality experienced by children born outside marriage and by children living in institutions was known to Government departments.
Mortality statistics were being collected and published. Official inspectors were raising concerns. Yet the Irish State response was profoundly inadequate.
When Taoiseach Micheál Martin issued the formal State apology in January 2021, he acknowledged that the exceptionally high mortality rates in Mother and Baby Homes had been known to both local and national authorities. He then made an especially important admission; there was “little or no evidence of State intervention” in response to those alarming statistics, and reports identifying problems had not been acted upon. That admission is central to any fair assessment of responsibility.

How Much Blame Can Be Placed on the Irish State?
It is impossible to give an honest percentage. Historical evidence cannot tell us that, for example, 30%, 50% or 70% of Tuam deaths were directly caused by State failure.
Many infants were premature. Some had serious congenital conditions. Measles, tuberculosis, influenza, pneumonia and whooping cough could kill even children receiving reasonable contemporary medical care. But the evidence does allow a strong conclusion about institutional responsibility.
The State, through local government and central administration, knew vulnerable children were dying at exceptionally high rates. A State-controlled institution lacked adequate isolation facilities. The buildings and sanitary conditions were deficient.
Warnings existed. Mortality statistics existed. Yet sufficiently effective corrective intervention did not follow.
The Irish Government itself has subsequently acknowledged that the State failed in its duty towards vulnerable mothers and children.

State Failure Began Before Women Reached Tuam
There was also a wider failure. Many unmarried mothers entered institutions because realistic alternatives were extremely limited.
Women without family support could face poverty, homelessness, social exclusion and severe stigma. Ireland did not introduce a dedicated ‘Unmarried Mother’s Allowance’ until 1973, long after the Tuam home had closed.
Had adequate financial assistance, housing and community-based support been available, more women may have been able to remain with and raise their children outside institutions.
The institutional system therefore cannot be examined separately from the social and Irish State policies that helped make institutionalisation the practical option for thousands of women.

Disease Was Real, But That Does Not End the Question
It is important not to replace one oversimplification with another. The evidence does not show that the hundreds of children at Tuam were deliberately killed. But neither does it support the argument that they simply died because “children died young in those days.” The central question is not merely what was written on each death certificate. If a certificate recorded pneumonia, measles, gastroenteritis or whooping cough, we must also ask, Why were so many vulnerable children concentrated together? Were infectious children adequately isolated? Were sanitation, nutrition, heating and medical facilities sufficient? When death rates became extraordinarily high, why did authorities not intervene more forcefully?

Those are questions of governance and responsibility. The Excavation May Finally Restore Individual Identities The excavation now taking place may help answer questions that remained unresolved for decades. ODAIT is conducting forensic anthropological examination and collecting family DNA samples in an effort to identify recovered children. As of the latest update, 74 family reference DNA samples had been collected.
It may never be possible to determine the precise medical cause of death from skeletal remains in many cases. Diseases such as pneumonia, influenza, gastroenteritis and whooping cough often leave no identifiable trace on bones. But identification could potentially connect remains with names, dates and surviving historical records.

For decades the Tuam story was discussed in terms of numbers: 796, 978 and now 109 recovered individuals in coffins. Behind every one of those numbers was a child. The continuing excavation offers the possibility that some may finally be restored not simply to history, but to their families, by name.

A Final Moral Question.
What happened at Tuam may not fit the strict legal definition of genocide, which requires proof of an intention to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. But that legal distinction should not diminish the moral gravity of what occurred.

These were overwhelmingly vulnerable women and children, many impoverished, socially stigmatised and dependent upon institutions over which the Irish State exercised substantial responsibility.
The Irish Government itself has acknowledged a profound generational wrong, repeated State failures, neglect, oppressive discrimination and circumstances in which institutionalisation significantly reduced children’s prospects of survival.
The evidence does not establish an organised intention to physically destroy this population; it does, however, support a deeply troubling picture in which a marginalised group could be segregated, deprived of meaningful alternatives and exposed to conditions associated with extraordinary mortality, while those with the power to intervene repeatedly failed to do enough.

Whatever legal terminology is ultimately applied, that raises a fundamental moral question for Irish history; “How could the lives of poor, unmarried mothers and their children have been valued so little that suffering and death on this scale were allowed to continue?”