By Claire O’sullivan and Stephen Rogers
Irish Examiner
December 19, 2008
http://www.examiner.ie/irishexaminer/pages/story.aspx-qqqg=ireland-qqqm=ireland-qqqa=ireland-qqqid=80445-qqqx=1.asp
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THE Minister for Children may refer a report into allegations of child sexual abuse in a Co Cork diocese to the Dublin archdiocese’s commission of investigation.
On December 4, Barry Andrews received the Health Service Executive’s report on the alleged abuse in Cloyne.
He said he was deciding whether to refer that document to the archdiocese as provided for in the commission’s terms of reference.
Under those terms the report can be forwarded to it for two reasons:
* If it is notified by the Minister for Health and Children that a diocese may not have established the structures or may not be operating satisfactorily the procedures set out in the report of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Advisory Committee on Child Sexual Abuse by Priests and Religious; Child Sexual Abuse: Framework for a Church Response (1996) and any subsequent similar document.
* If it is notified by the minister that a diocese may not be implementing satisfactorily the recommendations of the Ferns report.
Mr Andrews said he did intend to publish the HSE’s report on Cloyne diocese but he said some legal issues had arisen over its publication.
He also defended the HSE’s decision not to contact the alleged victims of the abuse in its compilation of the report.
“The terms of the national audit of the Catholic Church’s implementation of its own child protection policies specifically relate to the processes and procedures surrounding the Church’s handling of allegations of clerical sexual abuse. They do not relate to specific investigations of individual cases. I am firmly of the belief that the victims of sexual abuse are best protected by closely following the clearly established procedures for dealing with the reporting of sexual abuse.”
Fine Gael’s spokesman for children Alan Shatter said the minister had abdicated his political responsibilities.
Mr Shatter said he was astonished that Mr Andrews had not read the National Board for Safeguarding Children (NBSC) report on the issue that he received last July.
Mr Shatter said the NBSC must publish its report — a report that the minister says he never commissioned even though the NBSC say it was written following an “alert” from his predecessor.
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