The Oireachtas joint committee on children and youth affairs will accept submissions from interested groups or individuals until Friday 24 January 2020.

The committee will consider any suitable written submissions received and will invite a number of interested parties to public hearings in the coming weeks.

The general scheme of the Certain Institutional Burials (Authorised Interventions) Bill 2019 was agreed by ministers last month.

The bill will establish a legal basis to carry out a programme of phased, forensic standard excavation, exhumation and re-interment of remains at the site of the former Mother and Baby Home in Tuam.

It will also provide a legal basis for a programme of forensic analysis of any recovered remains, providing for samples to be taken from the remains as well as from family members of the deceased for the purpose of identification of the remains.

Because there are no appropriate oversight structures currently in place for such a complicated and unprecedented project, the bill will establish an agency to manage intervention at the site and act as a dedicated and responsive authority.

If other institutional sites fall under similar scrutiny as the site at Tuam in future, the bill would ensure that further primary legislation would not have to be developed, though the Department of Children and Youth Affairs believes that “from a legal and ethical perspective, it is considered appropriate to leave burials undisturbed wherever possible”.