Northern Ireland launches inquiry into mother and baby homes with landmark bill

Northern Ireland has passed legislation to establish an inquiry-and-redress scheme concerning mother and baby institutions, which were prevalent in the country from 1922 until 1995.

The bill was first introduced in June 2025 and completed its final stage on June 30 of this year.

The inquiry will investigate issues raised in the Truth Recovery Independent Report , which was also published this week.

Both the report and the bill focus on institutions that for over 60 years housed unmarried pregnant women who were sent to the homes by a variety of authorities — welfare, priests, family members — to have their babies. The children born there were typically adopted or sent to baby homes, while some returned home with their mothers.

Over 15,000 women and girls are estimated to have passed through mother and baby homes, as well as Magdalene laundries — institutions in both the north and south of Ireland operated by Catholic religious orders in which thousands of women and girls were confined and forced to perform unpaid hard labor. The last one closed in 1996.

The Truth Recovery Independent Panel report was commissioned to gather evidence in a nonconfrontational setting and…