The Ombudsman for Children has found major inadequacies in the area of child protection throughout the State.
A report on the implementation of Children First: National Guidelines for the Protection and Welfare of Children was
published today.
Full Report | Executive Summary
It found that most parts of the country had no 24-hour access to the Child Protection Notification Service.
Ombudsman Emily Logan found there to be a lack of consistency of approach, a failure of inter-agency collaboration and a lack of internal audits and external investigation.
The Ombudsman also found that some case work had not been completed because industrial relations problems had not been adequately resolved.
11 findings were made against public bodies and the report recommended a standardised national service.
The report was an investigation into the implementation of Children First, the National Guidelines on Child Protection that were first published in 1999.
In the 11 years since the introduction of the guidelines, case files from only one part of the country and on only one occasion have been audited.
Meanwhile, One In Four Executive Director Maeve Lewis says 'In the past year enormous attention has been paid to the catastrophic failures in child protection across the Catholic Church, and the devastation this has caused thousands of Irish people.
It is beyond belief that similar weaknesses continue to exist in the State system.
We must ask how many children have been sexually abused as a result of these failures.
As we have learned from the past, children will continue to be abused until robust systems are put in place to protect them.
