MINISTER OF State for Children Barry Andrews has said the Murphy
commission’s remit should not be extended to investigate other dioceses
as it was unlikely to teach the authorities anything new.
Speaking
ahead of the presentation to the Government of the
commission’s report into the Diocese of Cloyne, Mr Andrews said
extending the investigation to other dioceses would be a hugely
time-consuming exercise without much benefit.
“I’m not convinced
the length of time and the expense would teach us any more than we know
already. Anyone that has committed an offence can be prosecuted in the
normal way. Any child exposed to risk will have to be protected by the
HSE. I don’t think any further inquiry will teach us anything new after
Cloyne,” he said.
The Cloyne report was presented to Minister for
Justice Dermot Ahern yesterday but it is unlikely to be published for
some time.
A spokesman for the Minister said it would now go to the
Director of Public Prosecutions, Attorney General, the Garda and then to
the High Court.
“It’s a lengthy process. You’d be lucky to see it before Easter,” he said last night.
The
report follows an investigation by the commission into the handling of
clerical child sex abuse allegations by church and State authorities in
the Catholic Diocese of Cloyne.
It covered allegations made between
January 1996 and February 2009.
The commission’s report on the handling of clerical child sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Dublin has already been published.
Fine
Gael’s spokesman on children Charlie Flanagan made a call earlier this
week for the remit of the commission to be extended to all
uninvestigated dioceses in the State.
Mr Andrews is awaiting
details of a HSE audit of child protection practices in church dioceses.
And it is up to the Government to decide whether to extend the
commission’s remit beyond Cloyne on the basis of this HSE audit.
But the
audit, which was initially expected to be concluded last December, is
still not complete.
Mr Andrews said he was “frustrated” at the
lengthy delay and he now expected the audit to be concluded in February
or March.
He said the delay was caused by the huge difficulty in
cross-checking claims of child abuse between the HSE and the gardaí.
Both organisations use different systems to record child abuse claims –
the gardaí record the names of alleged perpetrators, while the HSE
records the victims’ names.
“It is unfortunate that it has taken
as long as it has,” said Mr Andrews. “However, it is one of those
situations where you want to get it right rather than get it out
straight away.”
In December 2009 Phil Garland, HSE assistant
national director, children and families social services, wrote to all
Catholic bishops seeking further information about statistics supplied
from the dioceses about allegations of clerical child sex abuse.
He
sought the names of alleged abusers from the bishops to make it easier
to conduct the audit.
The HSE said last night it expected the
audit would be finished in the spring.
“It is of paramount importance
that the audit is complete, accurate . . . and fully meets the criteria
set out by the Minister for Health and Children who commissioned this
audit,” said the HSE.
However, even before receiving the audit
results from the HSE, Mr Andrews said he felt it was unlikely the
Government would agree to a further inquiry into another diocese beyond
Cloyne.
He said the commission’s Dublin investigation was a
representative sample and not an attempt to discover all the truths of a
situation.
“It was simply to say what are the issues, what are
the problems, where did it go wrong, what are the legislative
requirements? We have all that information now and we will have further
from the Cloyne commission report.”
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