Anger at failure to name officials

ABUSE survivor John Kelly is angry that no government department official responsible for the welfare of children in residential institutions had been named, shamed or made accountable since the Ryan report was published.

“I am now wondering what the Ryan report was all about. We have spent millions of euro on the Commission to Enquire into Child Abuse to find out we were abused and I have to say that the wound that was opened by it is still festering,” said the Irish SOCA (Survivors of Child Abuse) representative.

“Nothing has been done to those who committed the abuse or covered it up, nothing, and that is why victims of abuse feel empty and cheated on. I certainly do,” he said.

Child protection campaigner Marie Collins said politicians seemed to lose interest in child welfare once the headlines faded.

“If we are not to have another Ryan report in 20 years’ time about the current situation, we need change, we need it now and we need our politicians to actually start taking action,” she said.

Ms Collins, who was abused by a priest when she was a child in Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin, regretted that the willingness to improve child protection did not appear to exist.

“We have got a lot of proposals but no real action,” she said.

Ms Collins said the referendum on children’s rights needed to be put to the people and become part of the Constitution.

And Children First – the national guidelines for the protection of children – also needed to be put on a statutory footing.

She could not understand why there should be a delay in the state ensuring children today are valued and cared for in the best possible way.