Irish prime minister apologises for abuses at Mother and Baby homes

Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin on Wednesday offered a formal apology in parliament for the treatment of unmarried mothers and their babies in a network of Catholic Church run homes from the 1920s to the 1990s.

A government-commissioned report published on Tuesday found an "appalling" mortality rate of around 15% among children born at the homes, reflecting brutal living conditions. Around 9,000 children died in all.

"On behalf of the government, the state and its citizens, I apologise for the profound generational wrong visited upon Irish mothers and their children who ended up in a Mother and Baby Home or a County Home," Martin told parliament.