Renewed push for mother and baby memorial in Athy
St Vincent's Hospital, Athy, formerly Athy Workhouse and Kildare County Home
KILDARE County Council is investigating possible funding for a community group to lead a project aimed at paying tribute to mothers and babies buried in St Mary’s Cemetery, Athy, and acknowledging the trauma they experienced.
This emerged at September’s meeting of Athy Municipal District, where cllr Aoife Breslin proposed ‘that the council, with other relevant agencies, advances acknowledging in an appropriate manner, the mothers and babies buried in St Mary's Cemetery, Athy’.
The cemetery contains the graves of people who died in Athy’s former Workhouse and County Home, which housed unmarried mothers and their children. There is no acknowledgment of this at the cemetery.
The council said that it ‘is predisposed to the project of commemoration’ but believes a community group should lead the project and is investigating possible funding.
Speaking at the meeting, cllr Breslin said that the cemetery is not currently owned by the council, something she wants to change. It had been reported in 2023 that the cemetery would come under the control of the council.
She said that she wants the design to acknowledge the trauma experienced by victims, some of which was in the relatively recent past.
What is now St Vincent’s Hospital formerly functioned as the official County Home for Kildare, taking in unmarried mothers and infants alongside other marginalised groups, during a dark era in Kildare’s history.
Cllr Breslin told the meeting that “these are people that were forgotten about, and it’s part of the sad history of Ireland and the shameful history of Ireland”.
She is in the process of setting up a “small committee” and wants council officials to sit on it.
She suggested that, through Local Property Tax funding, other municipal districts could contribute, as mothers and children from all over Kildare are buried there.
Cllr Veralouise Behan told the meeting that she has brought the matter forward to the HSE. She said that some of the mothers were from other counties such as Carlow and Laois.
In 2021, in the aftermath of the publication of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission report, cllr Breslin called for the Government’s Action Plan for Survivors and Former Residents of Mother and Baby Home Institutions, which included memorialisation and dignified burial, to be implemented immediately.
Also in 2021, the council authorised €68,000 for a memorial at St Mary’s after a motion by cllr Breslin alongside cllr Nuala Killeen.
