Andrews Urged to Fast-track Legislation to Protect Children, Patsy McGarry, The Irish Times, January 11, 2009

Andrews Urged to Fast-track Legislation to Protect Children

By Patsy McGarry
The Irish Times
January 11, 2009

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0112/1231515549529.html

Frances Fitzgerald: "issuing guidelines is simply not enough"

MINISTER FOR Children Barry Andrews is being urged to fasttrack legislation aimed at protecting children from abuse amid continuing concern about the Catholic Church’s response to allegations of abuse in the Diocese of Cloyne.

Fine Gael Senate leader Frances Fitzgerald said urgent legislation was needed to ensure the protection of children following what she described as “gross mishandling in the Diocese of Cloyne of allegations of child sexual abuse”.

She said Mr Andrews should “bring before the Houses of the Oireachtas urgent legislation to ensure adequate protections for children.”

At issue in the HSE audit published last week, was “the failure of the Bishop of Cloyne to fill out Section 5 of a questionnaire on child sexual abuse in line with HSE guidelines on child protection. Issuing guidelines is simply not enough, and this has been proven by the abject failure to learn from the 2005 Ferns report,” she said.

“The substantive issue, first and foremost, is the welfare and protection of the child. The church and various agencies are blaming one another but none of this would be an issue if legislation had been in place and strictly implemented.

“I call on the Minister to bring before the houses legislation that is currently being drafted by the Department of Justice.’’

Meanwhile, it has been confirmed that the Garda also failed to refer allegations of clerical child sex abuse claims notified to them by Cloyne diocese to the HSE.

In a letter to his HSE superior concerning the Cloyne allegations,dated December 4th, 2008, its assistant national director Pat Healy said: “Whilst the gardai were informed in respect of each case the HSE was not notified in respect of any of the cases.”

The diocese did not notify the HSE either.

“This entire matter has been referred to an independent inquiry,” a Garda spokesman said last night, in a reference to the Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation.

“An Garda Siochana will co-operate fully with that inquiry and we do not propose to comment on specific details at this time.’’

An examination of the HSE audit published last week also shows that it contains less information than that given by Catholic dioceses to The Irish Times when the newspaper carried out an investigation of the issue in 2005.

The 2005 audit by The Irish Times of all 26 Catholic dioceses on the island of clerical of child sex abuse allegations dealt with by them was successful in securing details from 24 dioceses. The audit was published on Saturday October 29th, 2005.

A year later the HSE was unsuccessful in securing similar information from any diocese due to concerns over Section 5 in a questionnaire it sent to all dioceses in the Republic on October 23rd 2006.

The Irish Times October 2005 survey found that in Cloyne diocese allegations of sex abuse had been made against 11 priests there over the previous 20 years. The Irish Times 2005 survey did not contain information from just two dioceses, Clogher (Monaghan / Fermanagh) and Ossory (Kilkenny).