STATE CHILD protection guidelines are far superior in Northern Ireland schools than in the Republic, where “several thousand teachers who are currently in post have never been vetted” the head of the National Board for Safeguarding Children (NBSC), the Catholic Church’s watchdog on child protection, said yesterday.Meanwhile it has emerged that the pope’s pastoral letter to Irish Catholics, following the clerical child sex abuse scandals, may not now be available before Easter.
NBSC chief executive Ian Elliott said he was struck by “the deficits that exist in relation to, not just the legislation but also policy creation and the provision of (child protection) services in the Republic. It’s very, very, very different” from Northern Ireland.
In Northern Ireland schools there was “a very tight system in terms of vetting. That does not exist in the Republic,” he said. Child protection policies in Northern Ireland schools were superior, “very much so”, to those in the Republic. He was “quite shocked” when he took up his post in the Republic with the NBSC in July 2007 at the “serious deficits” in child protection in the State.
Speaking to The Irish Times last night, and earlier to the BBC Northern Ireland Sunday Sequence programme, he also commented on current “incomplete” guidelines on child protection in the Catholic Church in Ireland and of “hostility” he met in trying to implement uniform guidelines across 186 Catholic Church bodies on the island.
Born in Dublin and a graduate of Trinity College as well as the University of Ulster, Mr Elliott, a Presbyterian, spent most of his life in Northern Ireland. He was director there of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children from June 2001.
In September 2005 he was seconded to the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Services as lead child protection adviser. The role included design and implementation of a major reform programme for child protection services there.
Headhunted by the Catholic Church, he was appointed chief executive to the NBSC in July 2007.
Tomorrow he will address the Catholic bishops as they continue their spring meeting at Maynooth. It begins today and concludes on Wednesday.
Whereas now he had “a lot of support from the hierarchy and others in the church”, there had been “hostility and difficulties with individuals who are no longer in positions of resistance,” he said. He had “no difficulty with any individual bishop now.”
In Rome, German Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the Council for Christian Unity, indicated that the Pope’s pastoral letter to the Irish faithful may be delayed.
Interviewed by the La Republica daily, he appeared to confirm this, saying it required “a much more general analysis, one that embraces the universal church and not just one country.”
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