Clerical sex abuse probe soon

THE inquiry into clerical child sexual abuse in the diocese of Ferns will get underway within the next three weeks, the Department of Health has said.

The terms of reference for the inquiry, which focuses on abuse by clerics in Co Wexford, have been agreed and the staff are in place. The department is merely waiting to sign the lease on the Dublin building where the probe will be centred. It had been hoped that the non-statutory inquiry would be up and running by the first week in January. But now, seven weeks later, the start date has been pushed into early March. Victims of abuse are anxious the inquiry would begin so that a terrifying chapter in their lives might finally begin to close.

“We’re pretty much ready to go. The inquiry should be up and running within the next two to three weeks,” a spokesman for Health Minister Micheál Martin said yesterday.