The Catholic Education Partnership – on behalf of the entire Catholic education community across Ireland today – wishes to acknowledge the significance of this report, the grave harm caused to survivors and their families, and those who suffered but are no longer with us.
The Catholic Education Partnership wishes to publicly commit the Catholic education sector to fully cooperate with the Commission of Inquiry when the Government publishes its terms of reference.
It is important to assure parents and students today that Catholic schools have robust child safeguarding procedures, most recently reviewed in 2023. The Catholic education sector is fully committed to maintaining effective child safeguarding and has always engaged positively with the Department of Education on the development, review and improvement of these standards and will continue to do so. All Department of Education school inspections include a child safeguarding review.
Dr Helen Buckley, Child Protection Consultant, writes in her report contained in Appendix 4 of the Scoping Inquiry Report, that “the education sector has robust safeguarding procedures in place”, while noting that increased resources and more frequent auditing by the State are required. The Catholic Education Partnership fully supports this point.
It is painfully clear that children and the trust of their families were betrayed in the most devastating of ways. The Catholic Education Partnership commits to working with our stakeholders and the State to ensure that we uphold our moral, civic, and statutory responsibilities.