THE CATHOLIC Church’s child protection watchdog “has experienced no refusal to co-operate by bishops” with its audit of child protection practices in the church since March, a statement on its behalf said last night.
“As stated by the board in its annual report 2010, published on May 11th last, an agreed set of documents was finalised in March of this year to enable the revival of the diocesan audit process,” the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church said in a statement. It added: “three further diocesan audits will have been completed by the end of this month”, bringing to six the number of completed audits of the 26 Irish Catholic dioceses. The audited dioceses are not named nor findings published.
Last night's statement, issued on behalf of the board by the Communications Clinic company, said it "noted the news report of June 30th in The Irish Times, and subsequent article of July 7th, making the point 'that some Catholic bishops were still refusing to co-operate with the Church's own audit into child protection practices in its dioceses'".
The board last night made no reference to a statement by the Catholic bishops on June 16th last,that: “Data protection difficulties are real; they were not fabricated or invented to prevent progress.”
Contacted by The Irish Times last night, a spokesman for the Communications Clinic agreed such data difficulties were ongoing where the bishops were concerned when it came to the board's monitoring activities.