Mother and baby homes

To treat these records with such contempt is to repeat the contempt shown by Church and State to thousands of women and children

Television: Dubliner Martina Evenden discovers unknown cousin while cousin finds instant extended family

Some writers seek to delve into the inner workings of their characters’ hearts and minds using this unbridled technique. We talk to four

The newly appointed special advocate for survivors of institutional abuse brings an unshowy sense of determination to her mission

Paul McGinley pitches up in Ballsbridge; BBC Northern Ireland journalists get good gigs; Sharon Horgan enjoys literary success; and Fianna Fail decides to run new and not so new names

Radio review: the Liveline host’s snap judgment on Simon Harris’s State apology somehow captures the wider mood

Addressing the families in the Visitors’ Gallery, the Taoiseach apologised for the successive rebuffs and humiliations visited on them

Use of next-generation sequencing technology for examining mitochondrial DNA material will represent a new departure for State laboratory

Independent TD Catherine Connolly says compensation based on business and cost and ‘absolutely nothing to do with justice or what is right’

I have taken what I learned in Lebanon and the Caucasus to Tuam; there are many similarities with the post-conflict missing-persons work

Pharma giant GSK, whose predecessor companies profited from the trials, has so far resisted calls to contribute

Missing Persons, or My Grandmother’s Secrets by Clair Wills: Secret pregnancies and missing women are part of the family story of a great many people

TV review: Dearbhail McDonald suggests it is time to stop seeing nuns – and, by implication, ourselves and our history – in black and white

To date only one of seven Catholic orders involved in negotiations – the Bon Secours sisters – has stated publicly that it will contribute to the redress scheme for survivors

Minister has sought financial contributions from seven Catholic bodies that ran homes or were linked to them

Roderic O’Gorman tells Dáil negotiations on financial contributions from religious bodies which ran institutions ‘ongoing’ and ‘confidential’

Film review: The emotional centre of the film remains with the survivors of mother and baby homes

Hennigan calls for public recognition – a reckoning – of the horrors enacted within psychiatric institutions

Daniel Mac Sweeney, leading the exhumation, says process will operate at ‘limits of forensic science’

Government-appointed director Daniel McSweeney will oversee ‘one of the most complicated forensic excavations in the world’