The Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, has called for an independent commission of investigation with judicial powers into all mother-and-baby homes.
His comments come after reports of a mass grave of infants and children found in the grounds of a convent run by the Bon Secours order of nuns in Tuam, Co Galway.
The home operated from the 1920s to the 1960s.
The Government has established an initial inquiry, the results of which will determine the nature of a more thorough investigation.
In an interview with RTÉ's This Week, the Archbishop said the issue of adoption should also be included in any inquiry.
Any investigation should be independent of Church and State, he said.
He said: "The indications are that if something happened in Tuam it probably happened in other mother-and-baby homes around the country. www.console.ie
"That's why I believe we need a full-bodied investigation.
"There's no point investigating just what happened in Tuam and then next year finding out more.
"We have to look at the whole culture of mother baby homes; they're talking about medical experiments there."
"They're very complicated and very sensitive issues, but the only way we will come out of this particular period of our history is when the truth comes out," he added.
Dr Martin suggested that Ian Elliott, who he said was a very strong person in the investigation of clerical child sexual abuse, would be the calibre of person needed to lead any investigation.
Meanwhile, Sinn Féin has said it will use its Dáil time this week to address the issue.
The party's health and children spokesperson Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin called on the Government to initiate a fully independent judicial inquiry into what he called "this latest shameful episode involving a religious order and the failure of the State in its duty of care to its most vulnerable and defenceless citizens".
He said the inquiry needs to look at the care in the homes, infant mortality rates and the burial of children in unmarked graves.
*Over 2,000 babies and young children at a number of Irish orphanages linked to the mass baby graves scandal were injected with a vaccine for diphtheria in the 1930s, it has been revealed. The children were used as guinea pigs on behalf of drugs giant Burroughs Wellcome. No evidence of consent has been discovered and there are no records of how many children became ill or died as a result.
*Over 2,000 babies and young children at a number of Irish orphanages linked to the mass baby graves scandal were injected with a vaccine for diphtheria in the 1930s, it has been revealed. The children were used as guinea pigs on behalf of drugs giant Burroughs Wellcome. No evidence of consent has been discovered and there are no records of how many children became ill or died as a result.
The discovery was made by Irish historian Michael Dwyer, of Cork University's School of History, when he trawled through thousands of old medical records. The illegal trials - consisting of a one-shot injection of the drug - took place before the vaccine was made available for commercial use.
"What I have found is just the tip of a very large and submerged iceberg," says Dwyer. "The fact that no record of these trials can be found in the files relating to the Department of Local Government and Public Health, the Municipal Health Reports relating to Cork and Dublin, or the Wellcome Archives in London, suggests that vaccine trials would not have been acceptable to government, municipal authorities, or the general public."
A spokesman for GSK – formerly Wellcome – said: "The activities that have been described to us date back over 70 years and, if true, are clearly very distressing. We would need further details to investigate what actually took place, but the practices outlined certainly don't reflect how modern clinical trials are carried out."
Two of the homes where the drug trials on children are alleged to have taken place were Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea, Co. Tipperary and Bessborough, Co. Cork. Sean Ross Abbey was the home where Philomena Lee was made to give up her child for adoption. Her son died without seeing his mother again. The story was made famous in the award-winning film Philomena.
The Sean Ross Abbey and Bessborough homes are also linked with the discovery of mass baby graves at Tuam, Co. Galway by historian Catherine Corless. The remains of almost 800 babies were found in a septic tank at the site of the home, once run by nuns from the Sisters of the Bon Secours.
Altogether some 4,000 babies are thought to have been buried in mass graves across Ireland in the mid-20th century. There are calls for Taoiseach Enda Kenny to make a formal apology and launch an investigation into the scandal. Kenny said he had ordered officials to "see what the scale is, what's involved here, and whether this is isolated or if there are others around the country that need to be looked at".
*An Irish MP says bodies may have to be exhumed to ascertain if a secret grave at Tuam, County Galway, contains the remains of nearly 800 children who died in a home for unmarried mothers.
Local residents had long believed it to be a burial ground from the period of the Irish famine but recent studies have convinced them that the bodies may be those of children from a workhouse.
Colm Keaveney TD, from the Fianna Fail party, said: "If it's established by forensics that there are bodies on site that have been buried there under the auspices of the local authority with the Bon Secours Sisters, that opens up a different degree of investigation because then we have to ask the key question - what were the circumstances in which these vulnerable children died?"
The Bon Secours Sisters, a religious order, ran the St Mary's Home at Tuam. Some 796 babies and infants are known to have died there, with death certificates citing measles, tuberculosis and malnutrition among the causes.
Former resident, JP Rodgers, cannot believe he is not among the dead. He struggled with his emotions when recalling how he had been separated from his mother at 13 months and did not see her for 33 years.
He said: "I can't explain why I was saved and why I was one of the lucky ones.
"I think I inherited that from my mother. She was a very, very determined person. She was very resilient.
"At the same time, she was so ladylike that I wanted to write her story because I knew, as far as I was concerned, I could feel it in my blood and in my bones, that she was a very special person."
It was only when the local community began raising funds for a memorial that authorities came under pressure to explain how the bodies came to be here, even though they had been discovered years ago.
Historian Catherine Corless said: "Two little boys, when they were playing in the early 1970s, came across this massive hollow in the ground here and what they found terrified them. They found some slabs on top of this hollow and one of them was cracked and when they opened the cracked slab, they said it was full to the brim with little skulls and bones."
Some 4,000 children are thought to have died in 10 similar institutions across Ireland and the Tuam community want the names of the 796, whom they believe to be buried here, listed on memorial plaques.
The only indication of the tomb, under a plot of land within a housing estate, was a statue of the Virgin Mary, where an elderly lady was praying for the souls of Ireland's departed children.
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