Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)

The Ferns Report is one of a series of inquiries into child sexual abuse which demonstrate the failures of those with responsibility to protect children from harm. I am truly humbled by the strength and courage of all survivors of child abuse, those named by this inquiry and all those who remain anonymous.

A certainty stemming from this emotive inquiry, as it did from the previous inquiries in the 1990s for example, into the swimming association, is that lessons must be learned and commitments made, if children are to be protected now and in the future. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by Ireland in 1992, enshrines the rights of children to protection from violence, abuse and exploitation. States are obliged to implement its contents. In 1999 the Department of Health and Children published, Children First: national guidelines for the protection and welfare of children. The guidelines were republished last year and they constitute an overview of the State's working procedures for the protection of children from abuse. Children First represents a good model for the protection of children by the State but only if it is fully resourced and implemented. Due to under-resourcing and staffing shortages, it is not being implemented in all Health Service Executive areas at present.

Implementation failures have been identified by a number of child protection officers, CPOs. The introduction of the post of CPO in the youth work sector resulted from the recommendations of Children First, which included a role description. It is the responsibility of these CPOs to ensure child protection concerns in their organisations are reported to the relevant authorities, so they are uniquely placed to identify deficiencies in the implementation of the guidelines by the key State bodies. The issues identified by CPOs and relayed to Sinn Féin include: inability to make contact with the designated persons in the Health Service Executive and the frequent failure of the designated persons to return calls; misinformation from social work department staff; lack of follow-through despite explicit provisions for same; great pressure and onus being placed on CPOs by social workers and the need for consistent boundaries between the two to be observed; a lack of consistency in terms of responses between individual social workers and across HSE areas, and difficulties assisting children and their families to access practical supports.

These issues are resulting in a failure to protect children which constitutes ongoing neglect of children by the State. On behalf of Sinn Féin I stress that this inexcusable failure on the part of the Government to implement its own guidelines is not the fault of social workers, rather it is due to the decision at Government level to under-resource and overstretch these hard working and caring individuals beyond their limits.

On foot of the Ferns Report, past inquiries and media revelations as to the prevalence of child abuse, Sinn Féin demands that the Government makes a commitment to fully resource and implement Children First.

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