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.