Mother and baby home campaigner who threatened to set the dogs on nuns passes away

“The nuns and gardaí came to bring me back [when I ran away], but I told them I’d set my dogs on them, and they left me alone,” she said at the time.

Hundreds of people took to social media to commend her bravery for standing up against the Church and gardaí at the time.

On Thursday, her daughter Mags McKinney said her mother passed away peacefully following a short illness on New Year’s Day.

“We were and always will be best friends,” said Mags, who campaigned on behalf of her mother at several protests when she was unable to attend in recent years.

She was unwell in the past week and went into hospital on Christmas Day and passed away on New Year’s Day. We kept a vigil by her bedside all week. We are heartbroken; we loved each other, and I tried to do my best for her.

“I just want to thank everyone who supported Rosie; people really appreciated her honesty, and she always had a smile and a laugh for people. She spoke her mind and everyone who knew her loved her."

She said nobody really stood up to the nuns and gardaí then, and she was only a teenager at the time.

“I also want to thank her lifelong friend, former Labour minister Joe Costello, who supported my mother for years when she moved from Galway to Cabra in Dublin."

Rosie McKinney was born in 1938 in Dunmore, Co Galway, and was the youngest of nine children.

She became pregnant aged 13 and miscarried. Two years later she was one of the youngest women to enter the Tuam mother and baby home, where she gave birth to two children, at 15 and again at 17 years.

Both children were taken away by the nuns and Rosie later escaped and ran away.

She told the Irish Examiner in March 2024 that she scaled the back wall of the building and went home.

“I was petrified on the night I went into Tuam,” she said. “It was a big old building full of women and children.

“The children were grand; I minded them like the other women in there. I had my son and then my mother and sister got me out of there.

The nuns and gardaí came to bring me back, but I told them I’d set my dogs on them and they left me alone.

Rosie also explained that she was in favour of turning the former Seán McDermott St laundry in Dublin into a remembrance site for survivors of Ireland’s institutions.

“I fully support the saving of this building,” she said at the time. “I do understand some people might not agree, but I am glad that it is there for generations to come and that no one forgets what went on.” 

Ms McKinney will be laid to rest next week.