Review of Safeguarding Children Policy and Standards

Changes in legislation, canon law and our experience of practice since the development of Safeguarding Children, Policy and Standards for the Catholic Church in Ireland, 2016 require that we now review the existing Church policy and make recommendations for change. This means that National Office staff will engage in a detailed consultation exercise inside and outside the Church. We have started the process by setting up a series of Listening Meetings with Church personnel engaged in child safeguarding. We will now extend the consultation to listen to the views of children and their carers, complainants of abuse, respondents, priests, religious and lay people who minister in the Church and a range of other interested parties in the statutory, voluntary and community sectors.

It is our hope to seek the views of as many people as possible; more information on this will be available as the work develops.

A steering Committee has been established to help guide the work.