PLANNING PERMISSION HAS been granted for the building of apartments on the site of the Bessborough mother and baby home, a decision condemned in the Dáil today as “shameful”.

The developer, Estuary View Enterprises, was originally granted permission by Cork City Council to build apartments at the site, but survivors, families with connections to the site and Labour councillor Peter Horgan lodged appeals with An Coimisiún Pleanála.

More than 850 children disappeared on the site and it is believed some of them may be buried there.

Today, the planning commission upheld the decision to allow apartments to be built, although one part of the development was not given the go-ahead. 

Today’s decision allows for the building of 106 apartments, rather than the original 140.

The Special Advocate for Survivors of Institutional Abuse, Patricia Carey, said today she was “shocked” by the commission’s decision, calling it “abhorrent”. 

“It is critical that the government intervene immediately and directly to stop this development proceeding and to work with survivor groups to agree a plan to identify the locations of all disappeared children’s remains and provide for dignified burial and memorialisation,” she said. 

The concerns and demands of survivors and families were put to the government in the Dáil today by Sinn Féin TD Eoin Ó Broin, who said the commission had made “a shameful decision”. 

Ó Broin said survivors want the development of apartments to be stopped and to see the site turned into “a site of national conscience”.

He asked when the government would meet with the families and survivors.

Enterprise minister Peter Burke, who took Leaders Questions today, said he hoped the government would engage with them “compassionately” but that he had not spoken to Taoiseach Micheál Martin since the appeals were rejected. 

But he said that now the decision has been made, “we have the opportunity” to meet with them.

Survivors and families have also long called for the site to be excavated.

“Of the 923 children who died in Bessborough, the burial records of only 64 of these children have been identified and located – this is an absolute disgrace,” Patricia Carey said. 

In late June, over 250 people attended a vigil in Bessborough, where survivors said they were prepared to chain themselves to construction machinery on the site to stop the development going ahead.  

Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns said today that the commission’s decision was “shocking”.

Cairns noted that the decision states that “from the information available, there is no evidence that there are unrecorded burials in the area proposed for the subject development”.

Cairns said that the available information “is wholly inadequate”.

“There has never been a comprehensive survey of the site to try to find out if children were buried there,” she said.