Interim guidelines for priests,church staff, and those who deal with children in church-related activities are to be circulated to all Catholic dioceses in Ireland in the coming weeks.
A draft of the guidelines, drawn up by the Bishops' Child Protection Office in Maynooth, is under consideration in each diocese, The Irish Times has learned.
This follows the publication by Ferns diocese of its own interim guidelines advising its clergy, staff, and volunteers not to be alone with children.
Parishes were requested to post them in church porches last weekend.
The interim guidelines, to be circulated by the Child Protection Office to all dioceses in the State, are based on Department of Health and Children guidelines for all professionals who deal with children.
Those guidelines advise that physical contact and showing concern for children by professionals "should only take place when it is acceptable to all persons concerned".
The guidelines also say that professionals should not "tell jokes of a sexual nature in the presence of children".
Workers should not give lifts in their cars to individual young people, especially for long journeys, they say.
The issuing of the Ferns guidelines followed meetings with priests of the diocese in October, February and May.
Ferns diocesan spokesman, Father John Carroll, said yesterday that the guidelines make explicit "the diocese's unequivocal commitment to child protection".
He said it was the aim and plan in Ferns "to achieve best possible practise for today and for the days ahead".
The One In Four group, run by and for survivors of child sex abuse, yesterday welcomed the Ferns guidelines "and the response of the diocese to historic clerical sexual abuse".
It particularly welcomed the high profile given by Bishop Eamonn Walsh to the issue and "an end finally to the institutional denial of the phenomenon of child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. A phenomenon that we assert exists across all levels of our society," it said in a statement.
The Director of the Bishop's Child Protection Office, Mr Paul Bailey, said yesterday that the interim guidelines to be circulated to all dioceses would apply until the Bishops' Working Group on Child Protection Policy for the Catholic Church in Ireland presented its recommendations next February.
The Working Group on Child Protection Policy is chaired by Ms Maureen Lynott. Set up at the beginning of this month, the group held its first meeting on June 5th.
Other members are Sister Martina Barrett and Father David Smith of CORI's Child Protection Task Force; theologian Father Hugh Connolly; Monsignor John Crowley, Defence Forces chaplain and representative of the National Conference of Priests of Ireland; Chief Superintentendent Patrick Cregg and Mr Kevin McCoy, retired Chief Social Service Inspector Northern Ireland, both of whom were on the working group which prepared Children First; counsellor Sister Evelyn Greene; Ms Kay Hyden, and Ms Gemma Rowley of the Bishops' Child Protection Committee; canon lawyer Father Michael Mullaney; health board worker Ms Suzanne Phelan; and Mr Mick Waters, co-ordinator SOCA UK.