ANY new abuse cases could get 'lost' in the bureaucracy of the Department of Education and Science, a former schools' inspector claimed last night.He said that the Department was constrained by "an outdated hierarchical system" which stifled decision-making, initiative and innovation.
"Hot potatoes" were still passed on from one person to another and decisions delayed, he claimed.
Seán Ó Díomasaigh, who left the Department last year to become principal of the Sacred Heart national school in Huntstown, Co Dublin, said he was not surprised by the failure in the system that had led to ongoing abuse of thousands of children.
The principal said the appaling revelations from the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse pointed to a systemic failure on the part of the Department.
But he feared such failure could happen again because the underlying bureaucratic nature of the Department had not changed to any great degree.
Industrial Schools, reformatories and orphanages of the 1940s and 1950s did not have a monopoly on the systematic abuse of children, which was also found in day schools run by religious orders, he said.
There was a much greater awareness of the dangers of such abuse throughout the system today, he said, and children were much more conscious as a result of the innovative programmes put in place by the Department.
Resistance
But he claimed that resistance by fundamentalist organisations and the Church had slowed the implementation of these programmes in some cases.
Despite the efforts of the Department to address the issue through the programmes, he feared such failure could occur again because of bureaucracy.
He said that the refusal by the Department and indeed the Church to deal with problems was not confined to the area of abuse. But his comments were rejected by the Department whose spokesperson said it had put in place procedures to deal with any abuse allegations.
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