Senators praise the Stay Safe programme

SEANAD REPORT: The importance of the Stay Safe programme in schools was stressed in the Seanad yesterday by members who said there was an ongoing need to protect children from sexual abuse in the light of the latest revelations about aberrant behaviour by clerics. Mr Joe O'Toole (Ind) asked what was being done for the present and future protection of young people.

He said it should be put on the record that the leader of the House, Mrs O'Rourke, in a previous role as minister for education, had brought in this programme against the opposition of major right-wing Catholic groups. "I would like to reassure parents and communities at large that we are now taking appropriate steps in order to deal with threats to our children today and tomorrow, as well as dealing with the problems of yesterday."

Mr Brendan Ryan (Lab) said he had been a member of a school board of management when the programme had come along. The difference between parents and the clerical church had become very clear. A meeting of hundreds of parents had shown they considered the programme to be mild. "They felt that their children should have been told in specific and more explicit terms about threats." Mr Ryan said they would have to reassert the primacy of the State because contentions about lack of knowledge were beginning to wear thin.

Mr David Norris (Ind) said he did not have any great hope that on a global basis the issue of the clerical abuse of children would ever be resolved until the dictatorial attitudes of the present governing clique in Rome were overcome.

Until the Christian churches began for the first time to tell the truth about human sexuality, we would continue to have this kind of evasion and damage to young people, he said.

Dr Mary Henry (Ind) expressed concern that the StaySafe programme was apparently being applied in a relatively low percentage of schools.

The leader of the House, Mrs O'Rourke, praised the recent RTÉ programme on clerical abuse of minors. She said there was no hiding place now for the perpetrators of such acts, nor should there ever have been.