The daughter of a woman whose child died in the Tuam Mother and Baby Home has described as "absolutely momentous" the beginning of excavation work at the site in Co Galway.
Annette McKay's mother Maggie O'Connor was sent to an industrial school when her mother died in 1936.
While there, Ms O'Connor became pregnant after she was raped by a caretaker when she was 17.
She was then moved to Tuam Mother and Baby Home.
Ms O'Connor was separated from her child after the birth and was moved to St Anne's in Loughrea.
It was there where she was told that her baby, Mary Margaret, had died in Tuam.
"Even a thimble full of Mary Margaret, to place that baby with her mum, would mean everything"
Ms McKay spoke to RTÉ's News at One about her mother's experiences and the subsequent investigations and inquiries into the deaths at the Mother and Baby Home in Tuam.
She explained that her mother did not speak about her experiences in the home until she was 70.
"It was the birth of my first grandchild that upset her very much, which was not the case for my mum loved babies and it brought out this harrowing tale about her baby; her bonnie baby, Mary Margaret," she said.
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"It was just unreal, how could we have lived all our lives, and she get to be 70 and we didn’t know about this terrible, terrible thing that had happened to her?"
Ms McKay said that it also feels "very hard and emotional".
"I've had my DNA taken because I'm in the group described as old and vulnerable," she said.
"Because I'm on the advisory board, I do have this bird's eye view of the discussions around DNA techniques, what's possible, what’s not possible, the ages of the babies.
"The way they’ve been lying in the water table, commingled remains; it is technically very, very difficult, but I have to have hope."
"Even a thimble full of Mary Margaret, to place that baby with her mum, would mean everything," Ms McKay said.
Ms McKay said that her mother had been moved from Tuam to St Anne’s in Loughrea, and she had been told that it was the women who the nuns regarded as "troublesome" or "wanting to spend too much time with their babies" who were moved from Tuam.
"There was no bonding with that child to be allowed," she explained.
"So mum was pegging washing out in Loughrea, and the nun came behind her and just said 'the child of your sin is dead’ and they threw her out the same day - that's all she ever knew about that baby."
Read more:
Excavation begins at former Tuam mother-and-baby home
She said that her mother was traumatised by her experiences in the Mother and Baby Home.
"I always tell people the nuns lived in our home because the nuns were always present - all the trauma, all the damage, all the pain, all the stories.
"I can recall now, the names of the sisters who abused my mother, so for her to keep that secret for 50 years, was a tremendous stigma and shame visited on those women."
"They had no idea about how deep the trauma was and how terrible the experience she's lived through"
After leaving the home, Ms O’Connor moved to Belfast, where she met Ms McKay’s father.
"She had my older brother in Belfast, but (the father) deserted her... she wrote to her sister in Bury and her brother-in-law came to rescue Maggie and my older brother.
"My father reappeared again, then there were two more children, and then he deserted her for good.
"So, Bury is where she remained and always described living in our town as a sanctuary."
Ms McKay said that her mother had always referred to English people as "very welcoming" and had helped her though "traumatic episodes".
"They had no idea about how deep the trauma was and how terrible the experience she’s lived through."
In 2015, the Government set up an investigation into 14 Mother and Baby homes and four county homes, which found "significant quantities" of human remains on the Tuam site.
The inquiry found an "appalling level of infant mortality" in the institutions and said that no alarm was raised by the state over them, even though it was "known to local and national authorities".
The State inquiry led to a formal government apology in 2021, the announcement of a redress scheme and an apology from the Sisters of Bon Secours.
Ms McKay said that her mother had not been very interested in the redress scheme and had asked her daughter to deal with the proceedings.
"A solicitor came and said she would take the case on and suddenly all this paperwork appeared - the baby's death certificate, the birth certificate and this place called Tuam.
"Years later, in a story in an English newspaper: 'A terrible discovery in the West of Ireland of a grave containing a septic tank containing the bodies of 796 children'.
"I knew she was on that list. And she was."
A team of Irish and international forensic experts have broken ground at the site of the Mother and Baby Home in Tuam.
The excavation will take two years and will try to identify the remains of the infants who died between 1925 and 1961, more than 11 years after Catherine Corless first drew attention to the burial site.
Ms McKay described as "absolutely momentous" the beginning of the work at the site.
"We were there last week, and the team gave us a chance to see what the site looks like now. It's forensically sealed and they were preparing to work.
"I describe that journey as a chance to say goodbye for now."
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