TV panellist Coleen Nolan has told of her fears that a long lost half-sister may be buried in a mass grave at a children's home in Co Galway.
The 51-year-old, former Nolan Sisters singer, said she feared the half sister she never knew may be among almost 800 babies found at the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam earlier this month.
A probe into the home was launched in 2014 after local historian, Catherine Corless tracked down death certificates for nearly 800 children who had died as residents of the facility. However, she could find only one child’s burial record.
The home closed in 1961.
Earlier this month, investigators found an underground structure divided into 20 chambers containing "significant quantities of human remains".
It is thought the children, believed to be aged between 35 weeks and three-years-old – are believed to have died between the mid-1920s and the 1960s.
Speaking this week, Coleen Nolan said she feared her half-sister could be among the young children found.
The former singer was speaking on ITV's Loose Women show, on which she is a panellist.
She told her fellow presenters, Andrea McClean, Nadia Sawalha and Janet Street Porter, about her concerns after revealing that her father had an affair in Ireland in the 1950s, while still married to her mum.
The singer was 20 when she discovered that her dad had fathered another child as a result of the affair.
"I’ve talked about the half-sister I’ve never met. She was born in Ireland," she said.
"I always wondered why she didn’t get in touch. She could’ve been one of those babies. It would’ve been around that time. All this time, I’ve wondered, did she die at childbirth? Was she adopted? Did she know about us?’
"She would’ve been in Ireland around that time, and this is just one of the homes where they’ve found bodies. As soon as I heard the news, I thought, please don't let her have been there'."
