As Sr. Evelyn has pointed out, Our Children, Our Church represents a very 
significant progression from the principles and procedures outlined in the 1996 
guidelines,  and the Good 
Practice Guidelines published in 2003. 

As you can see from the diagram attached and being displayed in the presentation, 
the structures in both 1996 and 2003 were largely based around the operational 
independence of each diocese and religious congregation. The Framework Document 
encouraged each Bishop to establish an advisory panel, to assign a delegate to 
receive and handle allegations of child sexual abuse and to train and appoint 
support persons for both the complainant and the accused. CORI and the IMU had 
developed their own parallel structures based on similar principles. These 
relatively independent structures were supported by a National Child Protection 
Office of the Irish Episcopal Conference and a National Child Protection Office 
for CORI respectively.

A critical development in Our Children, Our Church is the progression to 
a one Church approach to all aspects of policy and procedure in relation to 
child protection. All of the sponsoring bodies represented here today have 
approved this policy and remain committed to implementing it all levels of 
the Church in Ireland. As the next diagram will show, the sponsoring bodies 
will now share and fund the same structure.

The body with overall responsibility for ensuring the uniform implementation 
of the policies within this new structure is the National Board, already mentioned 
by Archbishop Brady. The functions of this Board are listed in pages 11 and 12 
of the document. Critically, the Board will carry out an annual audit (see 2.7, 
page 17) of the implementation of the policies and procedures contained in the 
document at every level of the Church. It will also publish the results of this 
audit, thereby providing the Church community, the statutory authorities and 
the general public with a new level of transparency in terms of the Church’s 
commitment to best practice in child protection. 

Importantly, the National Board will also publish national statistics in relation 
to child abuse involving Church personnel, thereby ensuring consistency of 
criteria for such statistics and providing further levels of transparency.

As Sr Evelyn has explained, the National Board will in turn establish a single 
National Office for Child Protection, with a Chief Executive and supporting 
staff, to replace the two existing offices operated by CORI and the Irish 
Episcopal Conference.

One of the first tasks of the Board will be to introduce a new concept into 
the existing structure for child protection known as the ‘Collaborative Unit’. 
Depending on the size and geographical location of a given diocese or religious 
congregation, a collaborative unit will comprise of a number of dioceses and 
or religious congregations in a given area, or in the case of larger dioceses 
and congregations, a single diocese or congregation with a large population 
or large geographical spread. The precise number of ‘Collaborative Units’ will 
be decided by the National Board.

Each Collaborative Unit will have a Child Protection Management Group made up 
of professionals who can provide appropriate advice and support to individual 
bishops and religious superiors and which will monitor the overall response 
to allegations and suspicions of child abuse within each Collaborative Unit.

Each Collaborative Unit will also have assigned to it a professionally 
qualified Director of Child Protection. This person, who replaces the delegate 
in the 1996 structures, will play a critical role in terms of receiving 
allegations and reporting allegations and suspicions of child abuse to the 
civil authorities. As section 8 of the document explains, ‘All allegations of 
child abuse against Church personnel shall be reported without delay to the 
Church’s Director of Child Protection’ and ‘where it is established that there 
are reasonable grounds for concern that child abuse has occurred’, the threshold 
proposed by the state guidelines Children First, ‘the Director of Child 
Protection shall, on behalf of the bishop or religious superior… report the 
allegation to the civil authorities immediately.’

Critically, Our Children, Our Church ensures that the decision about 
to how to proceed with an allegation or suspicion of child abuse is made by 
a professionally qualified person with experience in this field rather than 
by the bishop or religious superior. While the principle of informing the 
bishop about the allegation is accepted in the document, the policy recognises 
the moral, professional and statutory obligation on the Director of Child 
Protection to report an allegation or suspicion of child abuse to the civil 
authorities, irrespective of the opinion of any other person about the case, 
including the bishop or religious superior.

The other functions of the Director of Child Protection are outlined in section 
2.3.3 of the document and include liaising with the civil authorities and 
ensuring that they are involved with appropriate speed and in all stages of 
the management of a particular case. Again, this is to anticipate the kind 
of inter-agency cooperation that has since been proposed by the Ferns Report. 
The policy also obliges each parish and Church organisation to display the 
name and contact number of the Director of Child Protection in a prominent 
and easily accessible place. This is an expression of our commitment to 
encouraging all of those with suspicions or concerns to come forward and 
have those concerns reported to the civil authorities.

At the level of each Diocese or Religious Congregation, each Bishop and 
Religious Superior will have available to her or him a Child Protection 
Committee which will support the Bishop or Superior in ensuring that 
information about child protection is readily accessible in parishes and 
Church organisations and that referrals are made promptly to the Director 
of Child Protection. This Child Protection Committee will also be responsible 
for ensuring the planning and delivery of training in child protection at a 
Diocesan/ Congregational and Parish level, including the training of the 
Parish Child Protection Representative. This is the person who, at a parish 
level, will be appointed to promote awareness of the Church’s child protection 
policies and ensure that the public has ready access to the contact details 
for the Director of Child Protection.

I would now like to ask Mrs Kay Hayden, National Director of Training for 
the Child Protection Office of the Bishops’ Conference, to briefly outline 
some of the developments which have taken place in recent years in respect 
of training Church personnel in child safety and protection. 

ends
19 December 2005