A CHILDCARE lecturer convicted of attempted indecent assault on teenage girls was allowed to carry on in his post despite health authorities, gardaí and Government officials being informed of allegations against him, according to an independent report.
The report has strongly recommended that child protection guidelines be placed on a statutory footing to ensure that authorities are legally obliged to deal proactively with issues relating to child abuse.
Dr Niall McElwee, former head of childcare and learning at Athlone Institute of Technology, was convicted of two counts of attempted indecent assault involving four teenage American girls at a hotel in Amsterdam in 2004.
He was given a suspended sentence in 2005, but continued in his post at the college until last summer when he resigned after he was threatened with his conviction being made public.
A report commissioned by the Health Service Executive has concluded that a range of public officials who became aware of the incident did not follow established child-protection guidelines.
The report, by management consultant Conal Devine and child protection consultant Eoin Rush, concludes: "It is the opinion of the review inquiry team that it can reasonably be stated that if such procedures had been followed by the public officials who were aware of the incident, timely and clear outcomes in a child-protection context could have been achieved."
It says the lack of a statutory basis for the Children First child-protection guidelines means there are no specific obligations on individuals to report child abuse.
The report recommends that legislative effect be given to placing a statutory obligation on all State agencies to comply with Children First, as recommended by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. It also strongly endorses an initiative to develop reciprocal vetting arrangements with other EU countries for the sharing of child-protection information on individuals.
In the absence of such an arrangement, the report says it may be appropriate to consider placing a requirement on HSE staff who work directly with children or vulnerable adults, and who avail of career breaks outside of the jurisdiction, to furnish a police certificate from that jurisdiction before going back to work.
Jim Breslin, national director of the HSE, said: "The learning from this report will feed into our ongoing evaluation of how we deliver our childcare services and specifically towards the HSE's input into the current review of the Children First guidelines."
Minister for Children Brendan Smith said that while the failure of agencies to follow the Children First guidelines was regrettable, the review was a "clear vindication" of the guidelines themselves.
Fine Gael education spokesman Brian Hayes said the report highlighted the systemic failures of all State agencies to take the issue of child protection seriously.
In relation to the specific conviction, which occurred in 2005, he noted that when the allegation was first made in 2004, at least, six individual agencies were informed of the substance of that allegation.
"None of these agencies subsequently were informed of the conviction in this case and deliberately ignored this issue until it was exposed by the media in 2007."
