THE OMBUDSMAN for Children Emily Logan has urged the Government not to allow its focus on the economy lead to the neglect of its commitment to children.
Ms Logan said when Ireland ratified the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child in 1992, it signed up to making five-yearly progress reports to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.
However, Ireland had missed its last deadline and its report was now overdue.
“Taoiseach Enda Kenny announced that Ireland was seeking election to the UN Human Rights Council and while this move is welcome, I would like to see congruence with the Government meeting its responsibilities in terms of the human rights for children,” she said.
“Ireland failed to report on what progress, if any, has been made in the area of children’s rights in 2006 and it was given until 2009 to do by the UN Committee on Children’s Rights but we still have not filed that report so it’s well overdue and needs to be addressed.”
Speaking following a seminar on child protection in UCC, Ms Logan said the report to the UN should address key children’s rights and welfare issues such as the continued detention of children in St Patrick’s Prison, child death, child protection, corporal punishment and children’s rights in the Constitution.
Ms Logan also said she had written to the Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald and offered her office as an agency to oversee the investigation of all child deaths in State care in line with best practice on the issue internationally.
An independent review into the deaths of children in care presented to the Government just before Christmas, but not yet published, found that some 115 children died from unnatural causes while in State care between the years 2000-2010.
The report compiled by a team under child law expert Geoffrey Shannon and Norah Gibbons, director of advocacy at children’s Charity Barnados, was completed in just under a year but is currently being reviewed by the office of the Attorney General.
Ms Logan also paid tribute to Mr Shannon and Ms Gibbons for their work on the deaths of children in care over the last decade.
