SENIOR FIGURES in the Catholic Church are still not co-operating with
its own child protection watchdog, despite assurances from the Data
Protection Commissioner that in doing so they would not be acting
illegally.
The National Board for Safeguarding Children is
conducting an audit of child protection practices in church
institutions, announced at an emergency meeting of the bishops by
Cardinal Seán Brady in January 2009.
A spokesman for the office of
the Data Protection Commissioner said legal concerns expressed by the
Catholic Church regarding its co-operation with the board “were fully
addressed to the satisfaction of all parties” at a meeting last
November.
That meeting was attended by representatives of the Catholic
bishops, the Conference of Religious of Ireland (Cori), the Irish
Missionary Union and representatives of the board.
He said it was
pointed out then “that there are no obstacles” to the board “having full
access to all relevant personal data for the purpose of comprehensive
audits of the church bodies concerned”.
He also noted that on September
17th last, representatives of his office met separately with the board
and Faoiseamh, a counselling service set up by Cori, to discuss data
protection issues on the matter.
Despite that the bishops, Cori
and the missionary union sought the meeting which took place last
November at which assurances were repeated.
Quoting from the Data
Protection Commissioner’s annual report for 2010, the spokesman said “we
were contacted in early 2010 by the National Board for Safeguarding
Children regarding data protection considerations associated with
accessing personal data held by the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland.”
“We
were advised that an auditing exercise had commenced in line with the
functions of the board. However, shortly after the evaluation process
began, data protection issues were raised. As a result, the audit
process was suspended pending clarification and assistance from our
office.
“We were asked to assist in finding a data protection
compliant mechanism to allow the board to assess the church’s current
policies and practices on the safeguarding of children and to ensure
that allegations of abuse were handled appropriately.”
Last month,
in its annual report for 2010, the board chairman John Morgan said its
sponsoring bodies (the bishops, Cori and the missionary union) “still
have unresolved data protection issues pertaining to ongoing contact
situations between the board/national office and dioceses and religious
congregations which take place regularly outside a formal review
process.”
It is understood this remains the position.
Some
bishops have co-operated fully with the board. At that launch last month
it was disclosed that three unnamed dioceses co-operated fully with the
board in its audit on each.
Cardinal Brady’s announcement of the
audit followed an emergency meeting of the Catholic bishops on January
23rd, 2009. It followed revelations in a report by the board, published
the previous month, that child protection practices in Cloyne diocese
were “inadequate and in some respects dangerous”.
That led to the
remit of the Murphy commission being extended by the previous government
to include Cloyne.
The commission’s report on Cloyne was submitted in
December to the then minister for justice Dermot Ahern and has yet to be
published.