About 110 people have come forward to give their DNA to the team overseeing the excavation of the site of the former mother and baby home in Tuam, Co Galway.
Samples have been taken from 18 people so far, the body overseeing the dig has confirmed.
At present, the Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention Tuam team is only collecting DNA samples from elderly or vulnerable people. However, samples will soon be taken from a wider pool of relatives.
In a statement, a spokeswoman for the team said the identification programme would “commence soon, in accordance with the staged approach of the Institutional Burials Act 2022” .
RM Block
The excavation of the site began on July 14th and is expected to take at least two years. It is believed hundreds of children could be buried at the site. DNA samples will be used to help identify any remains found.
The team’s director, Daniel MacSweeney, previously said the process of recovering and identifying remains would be “challenging for many reasons”.
“We cannot underestimate the complexity of the task before us, the challenging nature of the site ... the age of the remains, the location of the burials,” he said in July.
A range of relatives can give DNA from the maternal and paternal side, including parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews. However, in a restriction that has been criticised by some relatives and campaigners, cousins cannot give DNA.
On Friday it was confirmed a fragment of a human adult tooth was the only human remains found to date by archaeologists. “This is undergoing analysis,” a spokeswoman said. “This recovery is testament to the detailed methods that are being used on the site.”
The excavation is taking place 11 years after research by local historian Catherine Corless revealed 796 children died at the institution, which was run by the Bon Secours religious order between 1925 and 1961.
A lack of burial records indicated the children could be buried at the site. A test excavation in 2016 and 2017 discovered a significant amount of human remains in what appeared to be a decommissioned sewage chamber.
Before its use as a mother and baby home, the building operated as a workhouse from 1841 to 1918. The site was also used as a military base from 1918 to 1925 – during the War of Independence and Irish Civil War era – first by the British army and later by the Irish National Army.
The initial excavation has uncovered numerous personal items from trenches dating from the institutional era, including shoes, glasses and baby bottle feeders.
