Preparatory work will begin on Monday at the site of the former mother and baby institution in Tuam, Co Galway, in advance of a long-awaited excavation due to start in mid-July.
The excavation will take place 11 years after research by local historian Catherine Corless revealed that 796 children died at the institution, which was run by the Bon Secours religious order between 1925-1961. A lack of burial records indicated the children could be buried on the site.
When a test excavation in 2017 discovered a significant amount of human remains in what appeared to be a decommissioned sewage chamber, Ms Corless said she thought the site would be fully excavated shortly afterwards.
However, the process was delayed while the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes carried out its work.
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Ms Corless said she thought her work was complete in 2017, but “instead of that I had to fight harder and harder ... perhaps I was naive at the start”.
She said she is naturally a shy person and becoming a public figure was “painful”, but she knew she could not give up.
“I just had to, the babies kept me going. It was so unfair what happened to them,” she said.
Ms Corless said she received a lot of support from the public, but some locals in Tuam “didn’t want to hear about it”.
“They would say, ‘Why are you doing this? Don’t disturb them, let them rest in peace. We’ll put up a plaque’.”
Ms Corless said the children buried at the site deserve more than a plaque, as do their relatives. She said it was a “disgrace” that they had been “treated like they were nothing”.
She said she hopes the excavation will finally give survivors and relatives some “closure”.
Anna Corrigan, whose two brothers John and William Dolan might be buried at the site, said the children were “denied dignity in life and in death”.
Ms Corrigan, from Dublin, said the treatment of the children and mothers in question is “a wrong that should never have happened, but hopefully we can go some way to righting that wrong”.
The director of the exhumation, Daniel MacSweeney, said the process is likely to take two years and will be a “unique and incredibly complex excavation” as efforts are made to identify any remains found.
