Slapping children ‘amounts to torture’

Slapping children amounts to torture and Ireland must ban it in all circumstances, human rights watchdog, the Council of Europe, has found.

This is the fourth time an Irish government has been told it is breaching the European Social Charter, a treaty it signed up to 15 years ago.

While hitting a child in school has been banned, carers minding up to three children, parents and relatives are still allowed to slap them if it is considered to be “reasonable chastisement”. But the Council’s Committee of Social Rights says that there is no such thing and beating children breaches the charter’s article 17, dealing with torture.