There was a mixed reaction to the child protection guidelines published yesterday by the Irish Catholic Church.
Minister of State for Children Brian Lenihan welcomed them as "a step in the right direction".
He also welcomed the announcement that former Supreme Court judge Anthony Hederman is to be chairman of the church's National Board for Child Protection.
"My office will be reviewing the document and its operation in the light of the Ferns Report and in the work of the Commission of Investigation in relation to the Dublin diocese," Mr Lenihan said.
The Our Children, Our Church guidelines, and the new professionally-based structures proposed, will be a key element in ensuring that the recommendations in the Ferns Report are implemented, he added.
The Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (ISPCC) also welcomed the guidelines.
It said it was a progressive statement of the church's commitment to nurturing and protecting children.
It welcomed the code of good practice for church organisations and the fact that these guidelines are grounded within the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
However, Colm O'Gorman, of One in Four, said the new guidelines represented a "giant step backwards in child protection within a Roman Catholic Church context".
One in Four is a national charity for people who have experienced abuse.
He objected in particular to provisions in the guidelines which mean allegations are not immediately reported to the civil authorities in all instances.
He said that in the past the church had "consistently acted to subvert investigations into clerical sexual abuse and kept secret complaints, allegations and suspicions of such abuse".
New church policy directly conflicts with the recommendations of the Ferns Report, Mr O'Gorman said.
He added: "Once again the Roman Catholic Church has demonstrated that it continues to believe that it has the right to withhold information about child abuse and child protection concerns from appropriate State agencies. Little has changed."
Marie Collins, a member of the disbanded working group set up by the Catholic Church to advise on the new guidelines, said she was "totally disappointed" yesterday.
"We are back where we were before," she said.
The working group's recommendations had been "filleted out". Where allegations were concerned "it is the job of the guards to investigate", she said, "that was the feeling of the [working] group."
