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	State to Review Church Guidelines on Child Abuse By Niamh Connolly The Post [Ireland] April 9, 2006 http://www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqt= NEWS-qqqs=news-qqqid=13312-qqqx=1.asp The government has commissioned a review of the Catholic Church's new guidelines on child sexual abuse to examine if they are compatible with state guidelines. The church's publication, Our Children, Our Church, will be assessed by Helen Buckley, one of the three authors of the Ferns Report into clerical child sexual abuse in the Co Wexford diocese. The child protection expert is an academic at Trinity College Dublin. In an interview, the Minister for Children, Brian Lenihan, said he was presented with a copy of Our Children, Our Church by the Archbishop of Armagh, Dr Sean Brady, in December. "I indicated at the time that they were a step in the right direction but I did not sign off on them," Lenihan said. "I have since asked Helen Buckley to review the guidelines." The Ferns inquiry identified more than 100 allegations of child sexual abuse against 21 priests between 1962 and 2002. Lenihan said he believed there were many technical matters arising from the Church's guidelines, and he was "anxious to move this away from the realm of partisan debate towards a rational examination." "Let's have an informed view to assess if the Catholic Church's publication, published in the wake of the Ferns Inquiry, does comply with our state standards," he said. One in Four, the charity which assists people abused as children, believes the Church's guidelines conflict with the recommendations of the Ferns Report, as they makes provision for some instances where allegations may not immediately be reported to the civil authorities. A key recommendation of the Ferns Report was to share and assess complaints made at an early stage through the establishment of an inter-agency group, comprising a Diocesan representative, a childcare manager with the Health Service Executive (HSE) and the Garda Siochana. "This is the key point about the recommendation of the Ferns Report. You can't have information withheld. There has to be an assessment of the information and it has to be an inter-agency assessment and it has to take place at an early stage," he said. Lenihan has the power to refer dioceses to the Commission of Investigation if he believes they are not implementing the recommendations of the report.
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