Lenihan seeks views on corporal punishment

CHILDREN and parents are to be questioned about their views on physical and other forms of punishment in a move which could lead to a legal ban on corporal punishment.

Children’s Minister Brian Lenihan is commissioning the research a week after the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child repeated its 1998 call for the Government to ban physical punishment, which is still allowed within the family.

The Council of Europe’s European Committee of Social Rights last year found Ireland was in breach of its human rights obligations by failing to ban corporal punishment against children.

Two requests for tenders on the Government’s e-tenders website seek offers to conduct research on the issue, one dealing specifically with children’s perspectives.

The project’s aims are to identify children’s views and experiences on different parenting styles and discipline, including physical punishment, and examining the effects on children.

The second research project aims to identify the main forms of discipline used by parents with children up to the age of 18. It will also seek the attitudes of parents on the legal position in relation to physical punishment, and if they would support changes to the law.

Dr Sinead Hanafin, head of research in the Office of the Minister for Children (OMC), said it is hoped that the results of both projects should be available by early 2008, but it is not specifically aimed at any policy review or legislative changes.

Children’s Ombudsman Emily Logan said parents should not feel that a legal ban on corporal punishment will criminalise them.

“You can’t go down the street and hit another adult, so why should you be allowed do it to a child? Legislation is needed but it should be supported by awareness and education for parents,” she said.

“We know there are families who are under terribly stressed conditions in which there is greater potential to lose their temper.”

In cases where parents have been prosecuted for hitting their children, a defence of reasonable chastisement has been accepted by the courts.

At last month’s hearing on child protection issues in Ireland, the UN Committee expressed concern that corporal punishment was considered a reasonable form of punishment in the family and asked if the perpetrator would be punished in the case of a child suffering violence and marks.

Mr Lenihan told them that corporal punishment is expressly forbidden publicly and remains only in the scope of the family. The committee was told that perpetrators were charged with assault and faced imprisonment and/or fines, punishments which will be the legal and practical norm for detention centres from next January.