Child protection rules - Time to care for our most vulnerable

There is a depressing sense of closing the stable door after the horse bolted about the new child protection standards drawn up by Hiqa, the health and social services watchdog.

The grim reality is that when thousands of children were in need of protection, no standards worthy of the name, moral or humane, seemed to exist in Irish society.

It is understandable that the focus of public concern has mainly been on sexual abuse of children by paedophile priests and the shocking violence and molestation in state–funded institutions run by religious orders of nuns and brothers where toddlers were subjected to neglect, ill-treatment and exploitation.