From top: Bethany Home on Orwell Road in Rathgar, a Protestant mother and baby home; and Derek Leinster at the Bethany Memorial at Mount Jerome Cemetery in Harold’s Cross last year
Paul Redmond, from the Coalition of Mother And Baby Home Survivors, writes:
The Bethany Home Survivors 98 group are holding their first commemoration at their Memorial Stone in Mount Jerome cemetery in Harold’s Cross, Dublin on the 22nd of July, 2015. The group are meeting outside the cemetery informally from 2.00pm onwards and at 3.00, Derek Leinster and bagpiper Robert Cameron will lead the survivors, supporters and their families to the Memorial from the Chapel.
Canon Gardner will lead prayers at the graveside. The Lord Mayor of Dublin Críona Ní Dhálaigh has graciously agreed to attend the ceremony in an official capacity.
Doctor Niall Meehan and Doctor Gerald Morgan, formerly of Trinity College, will also be attending. Daniel Mulvihill the man who designed the Memorial will be there. Many TDs have expressed their good wishes and will attend if possible. The Coalition of Mother And Baby home Survivors (CMABS) are attending in an official capacity representing several Catholic survivors groups and individual Mother and Baby homes similar to the Bethany Home such as the Castlepollard and Saint Patrick’s home groups, etc., who proudly stand in solidarity with their Protestant brothers and sisters.
The survivors of the notorious Bethany Home call upon the Government to immediately introduce a parallel scheme to offer redress to the elderly Protestant survivors while there is still time. We also call upon the Government to include all Protestant survivors in the current Commission of Inquiry into Mother and Baby homes regardless of where they were born. This includes Westbank in Greystones, Ovoca House in Wicklow, Breamar House in Cork, and all others.
Previously: Remembering Bethany
Justice For The Survivors Of Bethany House?
