The Government will admit today that its child-care agencies cannot cope with the number of young children who need help.
The admission will be made to a United Nations committee in Geneva by a Government delegation headed by the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Ms Liz O'Donnell.
The Committee on the Rights of the Child will be told that the Government cannot raise the age of criminal responsibility from seven to 12 years because to do so would place an "intolerable burden" on child-care agencies.
Seven- to 11-year-olds currently dealt with by the criminal justice system would become entitled to social services if the age of criminal responsibility was raised to 12 years. The admission is contained in a document prepared for the committee and seen by The Irish Times.
The document says the Government plans to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 10 years and expresses doubts that childcare agencies will be able to cope even with the seven-, eight- and nine-year-old children who will then be outside the criminal justice system.
The document contains replies to questions put to the Government after the UN Committee had a private meeting with the Children's Rights Alliance, a body representing 60 voluntary childcare organisations.
The Committee is examining Ireland's record in implementing the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Other sections of the document state that:
The practice of having a single Minister of State involved with children's issues in the Departments of Health, Education and Justice, to improve co-ordination, has been dropped.
Plans announced over a year ago to appoint an Ombudsman for Children have been dropped.
In the five years from 1992 to 1996 only seven cases of cruelty or neglect of children were reported to or known to the Garda. Elsewhere, however, the document states that 2,276 reports of child abuse were confirmed in 1995.
Under-age drinking is prevalent across the country and the sale of alcohol to under-age drinkers is a source of major concern.
The drugs problem is "a manifestation of wider problems of economic and social deprivation that contribute to a sense of exclusion for some sectors of our society".
Voluntary children's organisations can be expected to react strongly to the effective abandonment of plans to appoint an Ombudsman for Children. On Friday, following a meeting with Ms O'Donnell, the Children's Rights Alliance said it was "outraged".
The previous government had funded a research project by a group representative of the Alliance and of Government Departments which recommended that such an Ombudsman be appointed.
The recommendation was accepted and a decision to create the post was announced by the Minister of State, Mr Austin Currie.
Mr Currie had also announced that a Social Services Inspectorate would be set up. This would investigate whether the social services were adopting best practice and would investigate cases where there had been an apparent failure to protect children.
However, children's groups said the inspectorate would be a section of the Department of Health and would not be independent. Mr Currie's successor, Mr Frank Fahey, has decided to proceed with the inspectorate but not with the Ombudsman for children.
The Children's Rights Alliance has also been critical of the Government for what it sees as its failure to make the public aware of the provisions of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.