MINISTER FOR Foreign Affairs Eamon Gilmore repeated his concerns about the Vatican’s role in issues arising from the Cloyne report.
He told the Dáil he had “already expressed concern about the findings of the report with regard to the Vatican which, of course, in addition to being a church authority, is also a state which enjoys diplomatic relations with this country”.
Mr Gilmore, who was speaking in advance of his meeting with the papal nuncio, Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, said the Dáil would debate the report next week.
He said he and the Government shared the sense of outrage about the report. What was involved was a betrayal of trust and of children who were abused and ignored.
It was also a betrayal of the trust Irish people and society, over a long time, had placed, in particular in the Catholic Church and in its institutions in all of their dealings with children.
Referring to legislative measures to be introduced, Mr Gilmore said it would be an offence to withhold information relating to the commission of a serious offence against a person under 18 years or somebody who was intellectually disabled.
A national bureau would be set up to provide a statutory basis for the vetting of applicants for jobs involving contact with children, he added.
It would also allow for the collection and exchange of both hard and soft information for vetting purposes.
The heads of the Bill would be brought to Government for approval before the end of the month.
Mr Gilmore said Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald had received Government approval to place the revised Children First national guidelines on a statutory basis.
He added that the remit of the Health Information and Quality Authority would be extended to include oversight of the HSE’s child protection services from early next year.
Mary Lou McDonald (SF) said the report represented another chapter in the sordid story of the violation of children and the sheltering of the perpetrators of abuse by the Catholic Church.
“I think it needs to be recognised in this House that, to date, the State has failed children,” she added.
Éamon Ó Cuív (FF) said the feeling of anger and disgust was shared by everybody. “There is no politician who can add to the testimony of the victims in this particular situation,” he said.
He said Fianna Fáil would support any initiative to ensure it never happened again. A mechanism should be introduced to ensure that the voice of the victims was heard across the State, he added.
Joe Higgins (Socialist Party) said decent people were again throwing their hands in the air at the revelations.
It was shocking that some of the subject matter was so recent, he added.
Bishop John Magee, who was at the heart of the report, was also at the heart of Vatican bureaucracy for so long, said Mr Higgins.
That, perhaps, might in some way explain the “Omerta-like code of silence” in protecting those who were abusing children at enormous expense to them and to society.
Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Labour) said the church still had a vice-grip on too many institutions, and he congratulated Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn on his work on patronage and pluralism in schools.
Mr Ó Ríordáin suggested that if the House was serious about breaking the link between church and State, it should end the practice of starting the daily proceedings with a prayer.
