Church complying with standards, says child protection watchdog

The CEO of the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church Ian Elliot said today that he believes there has been compliance of standards of child protection within the Church.

It follows comments by the Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin last week, who said there are still strong forces within the Church preventing the truth emerging.

Archbishop Martin told of how he was "personally disheartened and discouraged" about the lack of willingness in the Catholic Church to begin a "painful path of renewal".

Elliot said that he is not aware of widespread non-compliance of the new standards.

The board has highlighted problems in communication however, saying that there needs to be significant improvements in how the Catholic Church communicates a sense of regret and remorse for sex abuse scandals.

In the last 12 months, 197 alleged cases of abuse were reported to the board.

A total of 83 of alleged abusers are now dead while 114 are still alive and 15 of them still hold some form of limited ministry.