Plan to help abused children falls short

Every so often, opinion runs so high over social issues that a Big Announcement is called for.

On a previous occasion, the Goldenbridge scandal necessitated such an announcement.

Yesterday, a Big Announcement was called for in the light of public anger over abuses revealed in the States of Fear series on RTE.

Following the Goldenbridge revelations a State-funded counselling service was promised to victims of institutional abuse.

The promised service then disappeared into a miasma of purported legal complications and never reappeared.

So when the Taoiseach yesterday promised a State-funded counselling service for victims of abuse, there was at least a touch of nostalgia about it.

The promise of a register of sex offenders and of a White Paper on mandatory reporting fall more into the realm of boredom than nostalgia - the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Mr O'Donoghue, has been promising a register for what feels like a very long time now.

Mandatory reporting was promised in the Programme for Government but has been pushed firmly into the background at the Department of Health and Children. A White Paper will be published "as soon as possible", the Taoiseach said yesterday and only time will tell what that actually means - or whether it will mean anything once the heat from States of Fear has died down.

One of the more interesting proposals in yesterday's announcement concerned the Commission to Inquire into Childhood Abuse.

Its first aim will be to give victims the opportunity to tell of the abuse they suffered "to a sympathetic and experienced forum".

It will also look into the causes of abuse in institutions and elsewhere - this could include secondary and primary schools, the Taoiseach said - and into the motives of those who committed abuse.

It will make a report of its findings, dealing with how to address the needs of those who were abused and how to safeguard children in the future.

It can conduct investigations and hold hearings both private and public.

But what powers will it have? This is unknown. Its first task will be to work out what powers it needs and to make recommendations to the Government within three months.

By then the elections will be over, and the heat from States of Fear may have died down.

This is not to say that the Commission cannot do good work. By letting people tell their stories it will help those who need to have their stories heard.

But it is important for its effectiveness that it has the power to require witnesses to appear before it from religious orders, Government departments and health boards and to compel them to produce documentation. Otherwise, its edge will be greatly blunted.

Then there is the matter of the apology.

It must be remembered that the children who were abused in institutions and in foster care were in those situations at the behest of the State.

The State failed to support families and many children ended up in institutions through poverty. The State then failed to provide religious orders with adequate funds with which to care for the children placed in their care.

The care system was, quite simply, a creature of the State. Places like Artane existed in an environment which facilitated what was happening inside its walls and much of that environment was created by the State.

But this is not what the Taoiseach apologised for. The apology went: "On behalf of the State and of all citizens of the State the Government wishes to make a sincere and long overdue apology to the victims of childhood abuse for our collective failure to intervene, to detect their pain, to come to their rescue."

This reads as if the Government's failure lay in not noticing or stopping what someone else was doing. It does not mention the State's own culpability, which was enormous.

There is another aspect to it, pointed out by Mr Owen Keenan, director of Barnardos, who last night gave a guarded welcome to the package.

It is regrettable, he said, that an apology was made only after RTE informed the public at large of events which the State had known about for many years.

One undeniably positive aspect of the announcement was the decision to change the Child Care Act so that residential institutions for children with physical or mental disabilities will be required to register with health boards - amazingly this was left out of the 1991 Act.

A negative aspect of the package is the failure to move on, or even mention, the appointment of an Ombudsman for Children - an institution that could wield effective power of behalf of children.