Tom Fleming (Kerry South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I certainly welcome the range of issues the Minister intends to address prior to the UN committee meeting and I hope the legislative process will be finalised before then. I very much welcome what is being done on the issue of corporal punishment. We are well aware that the State has taken no steps to implement the UN committee's recommendation that there be a comprehensive legal prohibition on corporal punishment. The common law defence of reasonable chastisement to a charge of assault remains in place. It is incredible that corporal punishment was banned in schools in 1982 but that it is still acceptable in the home. It is wide open to several forms of abuse, which is not right and proper in this day and age. In 2014 Childline received 7,365 calls from children about physical violence, of which 1,500 were about a real and present danger to children. We need to secure changes in advance of our appearance before the UN committee in January.

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