CATHERINE CORLESS

Catherine Corless is married to Aidan, and they have four children, Adrienne, Alan, Alicia and Aaron, and nine grandchildren.

Her quiet, secluded life - rearing a family, farming, gardening, and enjoying her pastimes of art, crafts and famly history research - changed drastically in 2014, after some research she had done into the Bons Secours Mother and Baby Home at Tuam was picked up by media and exposed worldwide.

Her research revealed the harshness, cruelty and discrimination of the mothers who gave birth there, and their offspring. It also revealed the terrible secret of 800 babies who had died at the Home from 1925-1961, whose remains had been laid in a defunct sewage tank. Resulting from this revelation, the Irish government was pressurised into setting up a Commission of Investigation into all Mother and Baby Homes in Ireland, whose final report was issued in January 2021.