Mother and baby homes

To treat these records with such contempt is to repeat the contempt shown by Church and State to thousands of women and children

Television: Dubliner Martina Evenden discovers unknown cousin while cousin finds instant extended family

Some writers seek to delve into the inner workings of their characters’ hearts and minds using this unbridled technique. We talk to four

The newly appointed special advocate for survivors of institutional abuse brings an unshowy sense of determination to her mission

Paul McGinley pitches up in Ballsbridge; BBC Northern Ireland journalists get good gigs; Sharon Horgan enjoys literary success; and Fianna Fail decides to run new and not so new names

Radio review: the Liveline host’s snap judgment on Simon Harris’s State apology somehow captures the wider mood

Addressing the families in the Visitors’ Gallery, the Taoiseach apologised for the successive rebuffs and humiliations visited on them

Use of next-generation sequencing technology for examining mitochondrial DNA material will represent a new departure for State laboratory

Independent TD Catherine Connolly says compensation based on business and cost and ‘absolutely nothing to do with justice or what is right’

I have taken what I learned in Lebanon and the Caucasus to Tuam; there are many similarities with the post-conflict missing-persons work

Pharma giant GSK, whose predecessor companies profited from the trials, has so far resisted calls to contribute

Missing Persons, or My Grandmother’s Secrets by Clair Wills: Secret pregnancies and missing women are part of the family story of a great many people

TV review: Dearbhail McDonald suggests it is time to stop seeing nuns – and, by implication, ourselves and our history – in black and white

To date only one of seven Catholic orders involved in negotiations – the Bon Secours sisters – has stated publicly that it will contribute to the redress scheme for survivors

Minister has sought financial contributions from seven Catholic bodies that ran homes or were linked to them

Roderic O’Gorman tells Dáil negotiations on financial contributions from religious bodies which ran institutions ‘ongoing’ and ‘confidential’

Film review: The emotional centre of the film remains with the survivors of mother and baby homes

Hennigan calls for public recognition – a reckoning – of the horrors enacted within psychiatric institutions

Daniel Mac Sweeney, leading the exhumation, says process will operate at ‘limits of forensic science’

Government-appointed director Daniel McSweeney will oversee ‘one of the most complicated forensic excavations in the world’

How much money is too much money to spend on shining a light in places that those with money and power would rather one was not shone?

Daniel Mac Sweeney appointed to oversee excavation of site to allow for remains to be exhumed and reinterred respectfully

Historian and campaigner describes selection of Daniel Mac Sweeney as ‘a great relief’

So many of the aspirations that fuelled the creation of the State quickly curdled into pious rhetoric at odds with reality. The future was just an attic in which we dumped all our present failures

The poet’s debut collection, The Speculations of Country People, reckons with the legacy of Ireland’s mother and baby homes

FG leader in the Seanad Regina Doherty said she did not see ‘any logical reason’ why 24,000 survivors were being excluded from redress scheme

In a patriarchal world, entering a convent often granted a woman greater freedom than motherhood

Actor Cathy Belton and dramatist Mark O’Rowe’s fascination with the Norwegian’s 1881 play bears fruit in a new version coming to the Abbey

Technology will allow for extraction of DNA from very old remains and matching to ‘third degree relatives’

Mass actions now comprising 10 per cent of all legal cases against the State

Kathleen King is still fighting at the age of 80, frustrated that the State redress scheme refuses to accept her account of events

Researchers say they were denied Freedom of Information access to archives on various grounds by Department of the Taoiseach

Donnybrook Magdalene Laundry’s books include Blackrock College, Switzers, embassies and hospitals

Drug giant rang up worldwide sales of more than £29 billion last year. Its refusal to contribute a cent to State’s redress scheme is inexcusable

In the News podcast with Bernice Harrison

Vaccine and baby-milk trials on children living in the homes persisted for decades — from the 1930s into 1970s

Clinical trials carried out between 1934 and 1973 centred on childhood vaccines and infant milk products

O’Gorman urged drug firm to accept corporate responsibility for way tests were carried out on mother-and-baby home children

Amendments likely to restrict scope of proposed redress scheme

Married women who gave birth in the institutions would be eligible for the minimum €5,000 payment