Archbishop Diarmuid Martin and the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church (NBSCCC) are at odds over aspects of the implementation of Safeguarding Children among religious orders. A spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Dublin said that: ''Archbishop Martin asked CORI if all its congregations accepted that they will apply the new safeguarding guidelines and they were unable to state that every congregation had agreed.''
However, a spokesman for the National Board confirmed that ''a meeting was held with CORI and the IMU [Irish Missionary Union] at which the document was adopted unanimously''.
A spokesperson for CORI was unavailable.
The dispute comes after Dr Martin questioned the number of complaints of abuse made against religious congregations.
Referring to a lack of statistics contained in the report, the archbishop said: ''Why have they not been able to establish the amount of cases against religious congregations?''
According to the report, 56 allegations had been made against clergy during 2008, 21 of which involved deceased clergy.
''Statistics are part of the picture; I mean we have priests [in the Dublin diocese] who have abused 50 to 60 children. Why is it such a difficult task to publish statistics that are known?''
The archbishop was speaking on RTÉ Radio One's Drivetime programme.
The Archbishop also called in to question the Board's assertion that some dioceses are being too rigorous in the application of the guidelines, insisting that he was ''puzzled'' by the assertion that ''the key issue was that some dioceses were being more rigorous than required by civil guidelines or Church standards''.
In the past, some bishops have been criticised for being over-zealous in removing priests from ministry without a credible allegation.
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(Source: IC)