Tuam has come to embody Ireland's shame. For decades, mothers who had fallen pregnant outside of marriage were sent to the home to give birth and hand their newborns over to the church.
The young women would stay for a year, working for the nuns who ran the institution, before being released once they had 'paid for their sin'.
Many of their babies however, didn't make it out alive. Thousands of children died in Ireland's notorious mother and baby homes, a 2021 enquiry found.
The deaths were hidden from the world, with residents in the quiet town north of Galway unaware for years that as many as 800 babies had been buried at their local home.
'It was always late in the evening when the burials took place. We never knew what was going on because you couldn't see over the high walls,' historian Catherine Corless, who first uncovered the scandal more than ten years ago, told MailOnline.
