Friday 06 June 2014 16.30 A private engineering company has carried out a subsurface radar examination of the site at the former Bons Secours mother-and-baby home in Tuam, Co Galway.
The company TST Engineering was commissioned to do the work by the Irish Daily Mail.
The examination has been completed and a company spokesperson told RTÉ the results will be known within a few days.
Meanwhile, minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald has requested a report from gardaí on all the information it has to date on the deaths of almost 800 children at a mother-and-baby home in Tuam, Co Galway.
She said the Department of Justice has been liaising with gardaí so the information available to them can feed into the interdepartmental process under way to examine the issue.
Ms Fitzgerald said decisions about criminal investigations "fall to be considered" by gardaí.
"Consideration will be given by Government on how best to proceed in the interests of all those who were affected by extremely disturbing events", she said.
Adoption rights advocate Susan Lohan has said the Government is lagging behind the church and public opinion in relation to the discovery of the mass grave.
Speaking on RTÉ's News At One, Ms Lohan, who is director of the Adoption Rights Alliance, said that it is a timely intervention and one she would have expected to see earlier in the week.
She also suggested that a criminal investigation should take place.
She said it was inconceivable that anything but a criminal inquiry would be launched into the discovery of the grave.
According to Ms Lohan, the mass grave stories are only the tip of the iceberg of what went on in the homes.
She added that the Government had no idea of what went on in the homes "despite sitting on the information".
Meanwhile Amnesty International joined calls for an investigation into the deaths at St Mary's.
The human rights organisation said the investigation must consider whether ill-treatment, neglect or other abuses were factors in the deaths.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Amnesty Ireland Executive Director Colm O'Gorman said gaps in State investigations into alleged past abuses cause concern.
He said research carried out by Amnesty International in 2011 found that the issues of mother-and-baby homes and vaccine trials were not investigated fully.
Mr O'Gorman said: "We carried out research in 2011... and [mother-and-baby homes] and vaccine trials there were two issues where we identified gaps in State investigation into alleged post abuses. The other that we flagged was the Magdalene Laundries.
"We would still assert that the Government has failed to follow the recommendation of the UN Committee against Torture and put in place a proper meaningful appropriate and independent investigation into what happened in the Magdalene Laundries and that's our concern about the announcements overnight."
Mr O'Gorman said he hoped the Government would recognise its obligations under international human rights law and deal with past alleged abuses, fully and appropriately.
The human rights organisation has said the Tuam case should not be viewed in isolation, and called on the Government to investigate allegations of ill-treatment of women and children in other homes.
The Government is gathering information through an inter-departmental group to decide how to proceed on the case.
Yesterday, Taoiseach Enda Kenny said he wants to know exactly what the scale of the situation in Tuam is and whether there are similar mass graves at other sites around the country.
Mr Kenny said he asked Minister for Children Charlie Flanagan to draw together a number of officials to see what was involved and whether it was an isolated incident.
He said a decision would then be taken in terms of what was the best thing to do to deal with "yet another element of our country's past".
He said he understood the situation had been known about since 1972 and there were Dáil records relating to inspections dating back to the 1930s.
Asked whether he thought there should be an independent investigation, he said Mr Flanagan would keep him informed as to what would be the best structure to put in place to look at it.
Meanwhile, the Bon Secours Sisters welcomed the Government's announcement of an investigation into what happened at the home in Co Galway, which they ran for 36 years.
The bodies of hundreds of children and babies born to unmarried mothers were buried in unmarked graves at the home between 1925 and 1961.
In a statement, the Bon Secours Sisters said they were shocked and deeply saddened by recent reports about St Mary's Home.
The said when the home was closed all records were returned to the local authority, and would now be held by the HSE in Co Galway.
The sisters said they were committed to engaging with researcher Catherine Corless and the Graveyard Committee in Tuam, which assisted her in exposing the 796 deaths of children in the home.
They also said they would engage with them together with local residents as constructively as possible on the current initiative to erect a plaque and refurbish the entrance to the grave site.
A spokesperson for the Bon Secours Sisters said members of the order would certainly take part in any investigation about the home.
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