07/07/2018 - The Report of the so-called "Consultative process" on the future of the Tuam site is worthless, a crudely designed mechanism to delay or prevent what clearly requires to be done.

This Report commissioned by Minister Zappone using Galway County Council as her agent, seeks to further the myth that the Minister and Government in general has the power to decide the future of the mass grave at Tuam.

 The only person or body which has jurisdiction over the site of the Tuam mass grave is the Coroner for North Galway, Dr Val Costello. The fact that Dr Costello has to date failed in his obligation to convene an Inquest into the deaths of 796 children at the former Home, does not confer any powers on the Minister or Government to deal with the issue. 

Where the local Coroner either refuses or fails to act, the onus falls on the Attorney General, to appoint another Coroner pursuant to s24 of the Coroner's Act 1962.

The Minister's actions to date have done nothing but delay the inevitable, by claiming for herself, powers she does not have. She continues to subvert not merely the wishes of survivors and their families, but to brush aside the obligations of the State by a means of a local 'popular vote' on the future of the site.

To be clear, Tuam is a mass grave of almost 800 children. The only moral and legal way to deal with that reality is for an Inquest to be convened and a full excavation ordered, to allow as far as forensic science will permit, the causes of death in those children to be established. The Minister's actions to date have done nothing but distract from and obstruct that process.