Children's charity Barnardos said today a referendum must be held on children's rights to ensure their needs are placed first in every situation.
Barnardos pledged to approach all political parties over the holding of a referendum in the aftermath of the controversial striking down of the Statutory Rape law.
'We want the interests of the child to be paramount in all situations,' Fergus Finlay
Speaking before the publication of the charity's annual report today, chief executive Fergus Finlay said there has been systemic failure to accord children's protection and welfare the urgency it requires
He highlighted an Oireachtas Committee report that pointed to the need to implant the rights of children through a Constitutional reference.
"We want the interests of the child to be paramount in all situations. We want children to have some automatic rights in this area. There is almost no legal situation at the moment where the rights of the child come first and foremost," he said.
Mr Finlay said children do not even have the automatic right to be represented in the vast majority of court cases.
"But all sorts of things can happen in the courts and around children that have both immediate and long-lasting effects on their lives - custody cases, care orders . . . situations where a child can be removed from his or her family, and they have no automatic right of representation."
The charity said a report from the Law Reform Commission published 16 years ago that proposed a model of mandatory reporting of suspected child-abuse cases should be implemented.
The 1990 report also stated children should not be subjected to cross-examination by lawyers but by trained child guardians if necessary.
"If you look at the events of the last few weeks where we had the striking down of the Statutory Rape law and the enactment of new legislation. There was an outpouring then about the needs to protect children and the need to ensure the rights of children were paramount in situations like this," Mr Finlay said.
Barnardos raised €17.5 million in 2005, an increase of 8 per cent on the previous year.
The charity said 60 per cent of funding was secured through statutory sources and 40 per cent was raised through a mix of fundraising activities. It said 88 cent of every €1 raised was spent directly on its work with children and families.
Mr Finlay said: "Child poverty exists in Ireland, yet this year's budget was the first in a decade that the words children and poverty were bandied together in the same sentence.
"It is heartening to see the awakening, but it begs the question how the one in ten children who are living in consistent poverty in Ireland could have slipped past unnoticed," he said.