Reporting rules will ‘weaken’ child safety policy

Proposed legislation on mandatory reporting of child sex abuse will “materially weaken” child safety policies in the Catholic Church, the institution’s clerical abuse watchdog has warned.

The National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church has called on the Government to tighten the current proposal on “reasonable excuse”, which will give people, in certain circumstances, a defence not to report suspected abuse.

The warning comes as the board reports that it dealt with 237 new allegations of clerical abuse against priests in the last year — all but six of them historical cases.