ClareDaly TD

Please help me find my missing brothers

An open letter to the Irish Government.

I am writing this letter out of pure desperation. It is 2 am Irish time and I feel I’m at my wits end. I have done absolutely everything I can think of to find my missing brothers; I have written over 200 letters and emails and I have gotten nowhere. My kitchen has turned into an office, I am a one woman show, I have boxes and folders with every single letter copied and filed as proof of my search. This is my last-ditch attempt to try and find any shred of evidence regarding my brothers. Somebody, somewhere must know who they are and what happened to them. They are two of Ireland’s longest missing children, but very few people know that. I don’t know anyone who knew them. I am an only child. I don’t have a photo of them. All I have is certificates, and that’s it, that is all there is to prove they existed. I have created more paperwork writing to every Government Minister involved in the mother and baby homes scandal, every Garda Commissioner, the Attorney General, you name it. And what have I got in return? “Sorry we can’t help you”.

My brothers are attached to the 796 children who died in the controversial St. Brigid’s Mother and Baby home in Tuam, Co. Galway which was run by the Bons Secours nuns from 1925 to 1961. There has been a Commission established into the Mother and Baby homes, but I am not involved with them, and anyone I approach for help, directs me to the Commission, everyone is hiding behind the Commission which in my personal view is not doing enough to establish where my brothers and all the missing children are. Did the pied piper dance his way into Tuam over a forty-year period and take away 796 children never to return to their families? Did no one seen him spirit these children away without anyone raising a red flag? Or did the children die in the home and are they buried all over the land under a housing estate? Who knows? If the children are buried on the grounds, where are they? No one sat down and spent years writing up Death Certs unless children died or were illegally adopted.

Let me tell you all I know about John Desmond and William Joseph Dolan. They are my brothers, but we have never met each other, if they are alive, they don’t know about me, they may not even know about each other. They may not even know they were adopted. If they are dead, I don’t know where they are buried.  I know there is a “small children’s grave at the back of the former mother and baby home in Tuam” where I was directed by Sr. Marie Ryan with the Bons Secours nuns when I wrote to her in 2013 but I don’t know where exactly their alleged plots are. They are known as the “Tuam brothers” while I am known as the “Dolan sister”. I will not identify myself at this stage, but I am willing to go anywhere at any time to meet anyone who has any information about them because the Irish Government and Police simply cannot or will not give me any answers.
Read More

Press Release:

SURVIVORS MEET MINISTER KATHERINE ZAPPONE

“At this rate, our entire community will be reunited with headstones in graveyards”

MINOR PROGRESS PROMISED ON LONG OVERDUE MEMORIALS

A delegation of five members of the Coalition of Mother And Baby home Survivors (CMABS) held a hour and a quarter meeting with Minister for Children Katherine Zappone at the Department of Children today. CMABS are extremely disappointed with the Ministers response to their reasonable requests for progress. It is clear that the change of Government earlier this year has reset the clock to zero in relation to our fight for truth and justice and survivors have to almost start from scratch in regards to practically everything. However the most prevalent word used by the Minister today was “NO!”.
Read More