Unmarried mothers' repatriations: 'I should never have been in Ireland'

BBC News Ireland correspondent

After almost seven decades it is obvious Maria feels a massive sense of loss for the woman from whom she was permanently separated when she was aged only two."She must have loved me so much," said Maria as she mused on a treasured photograph which shows her on Philomena's knee at an institution for unmarried mothers in Castlepollard, County Westmeath.

It was "run under the auspices of the Crusade of Rescue", which was one of the key organisations involved in the repatriation scheme.A baptism certificate shows Maria was christened at a church in London on 27 April 1954, a month after her birth. Since what is now the Republic of Ireland became independent from the UK in 1922, Irish emigrants to Britain have had almost all the rights of British citizens, including residence, healthcare and social security.

In Ireland the Catholic Church feared that children born to Irish women in England would be lost to the faith. For example, in 1967 the researcher Mary Frances Creegan recorded a case involving a woman who had moved to England at the age of eight but was sent back to Ireland when she became pregnant years later.

For instance, a welfare organisation in Liverpool docks reported contact with 1,947 pregnant Irish women from 1926 to 1930.Dr Lorraine Grimes says some mothers she had spoken to felt their repatriation was forced even though it was supposed to be optionalThere are recorded instances of women being sent to Ireland from various other places, including Birmingham, Glasgow, Manchester and Portsmouth.

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