Taoiseach Michéal Martin has been urged by campaigners to provide Government funding for the compulsory purchase of lands at the former Bessborough mother and baby home in Cork.They want to create a memorial park there to the women and babies who died at Bessborough but whose graves have never been identified. About 800 people joined a campaign rally in Cork on Saturday.On Friday, a day after nine Oireachtas members from Cork city constituencies signed a letter urging the State to buy Bessborough, Martin said on social media he had asked Cork City Council to engage with the landowners “with a view to exploring all options for the future of the site”.“Bessborough is an area of great historical importance and it’s a place of huge importance and connection for many, many, families and people – we need to do the right thing for all concerned,” said Martin, who is TD for Cork-South Central.In February, the city council granted planning permission to Estuary View Enterprises to build 140 apartments on land at Bessborough. An Coimisiún Pleanála substantially upheld the decision on appeal, recently granting planning for 106 apartments on the site. A rally on Saturday entitled No Building Over Bessborough was attended by an estimated 800 people in Cork city centre. Speakers called on Martin to deliver on his comments by providing the council with the money to buy the land from developers Estuary View Enterprises by CPO.Cllr Noelle Browne of the Social Democrats, who was born in Bessborough, said the Government should listen to the voices of survivors who did not want the development to go ahead at the former mother and baby home run by the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.“As you know, there was an announcement [by Martin] yesterday and we need to know that it’s not just words, that there is a follow-through on this – it was a nice breakthrough for us after all those months of campaigning but we need to see action on this now,” she said.Carmel Cantwell, of the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home Support Group, told the rally that Bessborough must be recognised as “a site of national conscience where truth is honoured and suffering is acknowledged … and developments on these grounds cannot continue”.“My brother is one of the 923 children who died after being born in Bessborough – his burial place is unknown. Like so many families, we carry a grief, we have no grave, no marker and no certainty. That absence is part of Ireland’s history and part of Bessborough’s truth – it is why this land matters,” she said.Labour Senator Laura Harmon welcomed Martin’s comments, but called on him “to continue to use his voice now and be a leader on this and ensure that this site is protected at all costs” in recognition of the 19,000 women and children who went through Bessborough in its near 80-year history.Labour Cllr Peter Horgan, who appealed against the Cork City Council decision to grant planning to Estuary View Developments, told the rally he found the decision by An Coimisiún Pleanála “abhorrent” and said it contravened the Cork City Development Plan.He said An Coimisiún Pleanála justified contravening the plan by saying there was a need for housing in the area, but there was already housing being built in the Blackrock area that addressed the housing need, “but we don’t want housing on this site of national conscience”.“A lot of people have argued that it’s too costly to buy back the land, that it will be most expensive public park in Europe, but there are times in this country when money means something to the higher beings in Dublin and there are times when money doesn’t,” he said.