The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, is expected to give evidence to the investigation committee of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse next Monday. Patsy McGarry, Religious Affairs Correspondent, reports.
A spokeswoman for the commission confirmed yesterday that it had been provisionally agreed Mr Ahern would begin his evidence at 10 a.m. on July 5th. It is likely to centre on factors leading to his 1999 apology to abuse victims on behalf of the Irish people.
Yesterday, Ms Mary McLoughlin, of the child-legislation unit at the Department of Health and Children, said the first mention of child sex abuse in Department policy documents was in 1977, when a memorandum from a committee of experts on non-accidental injury to children made passing reference to it.
Prior to that, "the understanding that abuse existed was not there," she said. Until the mid-1980s, in Department reports and files "there was very little consciousness of anything other than neglect".
Until the 1980s, the majority of social work involving children was undertaken by the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and it was "very much about neglect," she said.
Tracing the evolution of an awareness of child abuse, she said it first came to the fore with the identification of the "battered baby syndrome" by two paediatricians in the US during the 1960s.
In the 1970s, the Marie Caldwell case in the UK, about a child who was sexually abused by her mother's partner, raised a new awareness of the issue.
The establishment of Rape Crisis Centres in Ireland 10 to 15 years later led to a growing awareness of the problem in this State. It began to emerge that a lot of women attending the centres had been sexually abused as children.
In 1987, units for treating sexually abused children were set up at Dublin's Temple Street and Crumlin childrens' hospitals.
In 1987, the attorney general requested that the Law Reform Commission report on legal provisions regarding the sexual abuse of children. It did so in 1990.
Another milestone was the Kilkenny incest case, which was reported on after an inquiry by Ms Justice McGuinness in 1993.
"Until then, there was a huge reluctance to accept that this could happen," Ms McLoughlin said. "People did not believe children could be treated in this way."