The Minister for Justice says he wants a register of paedophiles set up in the Republic. However, Mr O'Donoghue said this was a "personal preference" and he expected to initiate discussion on the issue in a paper to be published in the coming weeks. Following reports that Ireland is seen as a safe haven by British paedophiles seeking escape from registration requirements, Mr O'Donoghue said yesterday a discussion paper on the whole area of sexual offences would be produced in the new year.
The Minister said he personally favoured a register similar to the type recently introduced in Britain, which alerts schools, police and local authorities to the arrival of a convicted paedophile in their area after prison release.
The proposal is likely to be controversial: critics of registers point out that they focus attention only on the small minority of paedophiles who are convicted.
According to the Labour Party spokesman on justice, Dr Pat Upton, a national paedophile register is needed immediately. The Minister should increase the resources available to the sexual offences unit within the Garda, he said.
The expansion of this unit to all major metropolitan areas was recommended in the 1997 Report of the Task Force on Violence against Women.
"This is the least we should expect from the Minister. Before coming into office, this Minister indicated that he would be a man of action. It is now time for him to live up to this promise," he added.
However, professionals in the area are worried that a register might be seen as a "quick fix", an answer to a problem which costs nothing and looks good, but achieves little.
"It can be a huge distraction," warned Mr Kieran McGrath, editor of the Irish Social Worker. "There may well be a benefit in having a type of offenders' register. But it won't solve the problem of the management of sex offenders.
"You're excluding 95 per cent of them straight away because they have not been convicted. There is a need for better co-ordination of all services, the prisons, the courts, the police etc, and this won't necessarily come with a register."