Historian Catherine Corless has appealed to President Michael D Higgins to visit Tuam as a gesture of solidarity with the infants buried there and the survivors of the home.

Speaking to the Irish Independent, Ms Corless said the President had so far failed to take up an invitation to visit.

“I would like President Higgins to come down to the site and say it is horrific and Ireland as a nation must do something about this if we are to move forward. It would be healing for the survivors and for Ireland itself.”

However, a spokesman for Mr Higgins responded and said: “We have no record of any invitations for the President to visit the site.”

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He added that the President has also been constrained by legal considerations.

According to Ms Corless, who unearthed death records for almost 800 infants at the Bon Secours-run home between 1925 and 1961, “an awful lot more could be done if the people of Tuam got together on this, but it is all whispers”.

“People tell me I am wonderful and tell me to keep going and that I have great courage. That is nice – but it is doing nothing,” she said.

The mother of four, whose own mother was illegitimate, added: “You can see the state we are in with those babies, trying to get them recognised; trying to get something done; trying to get something for the survivors. If they won’t look after these babies, they don’t give two hoots about the survivors who are still with us.

“I wonder is there still a stigma with illegitimacy – are they still lesser people down the scale that are not important. That is the very strong message I am getting from all sides,” she added.

She noted that when President Higgins visited Cyprus last October, he praised the work of the Committee on Missing Persons. It is working on a project to identify and return the remains of more than 2,000 people who went missing during conflict between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots in the 1960s and 1970s to their families.

In a statement to the Irish Independent, a spokesman for Mr Higgins said: “The President has, throughout his career in public life, been a passionate supporter of the issues Ms Corless has raised in her advocacy.

“From the outset of his parliamentary career, as a member of Seanad Éireann in 1974, the President co-sponsored legislation on the status and rights of so-called illegitimate children and again, in 1984, he co-sponsored a motion to abolish the status of ‘illegitimacy’.”

He said the President would be “happy” to meet Ms Corless “at a mutually convenient time in the future” and that he admired her work. He had praised her courage and perseverance on many occasions, including in his speech for International Women’s Day 2017 and in Galway in July 2018, among other occasions.

One of Ms Corless’s hopes for 2020 is that the one living witness to burials at the Tuam home can be prevailed on to relate some of the “crucial” evidence he holds. The man, who is now in his 80s and living in California, is the son of John Cunningham, who was the caretaker in Tuam.

The final report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes is due in February next year.

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