Mandatory reporting could have made a crucial difference to the manner in which the NorthWestern Health Board responded to the abuse of the McColgan children, according to Mr Eoin Keenan, director of Barnardo's.
The findings of an inquiry into how reports of the abuse by their father in the late 1970s and 1980s were handled was published earlier this week. Mandatory reporting was not mentioned in its recommendations.
Mr Keenan said that a legal obligation on professionals to report suspicions of abuse would have brought more information to the health board at the time and would have increased the likelihood of the information being acted on effectively.
Mandatory reporting had to be accompanied by a range of childcare services, he said. It was important that professionals who had information about child abuse, but did not pass this on, should be compelled to do so.
The Fine Gael spokesman on health and children has called for new legislation governing the conduct of health boards during litigation, writes Carol Coulter.
Mr Alan Shatter said yesterday that legislation should be enacted to ensure that, in a situation such as the suing of the North-Western Health Board by the McColgan children, the board would be required to present all available information to the court. This would ensure that justice was done and that no insurance company could "attempt to coerce citizens of this State, clearly wronged, into abandoning claims justifiably brought".
He was commenting on the report into the board's handling of the McColgan case from the time the family first came to its attention in 1979 until the two older girls disclosed the abuse in 1993. In its response to the report the board acknowledged that it had failed the children. Mr Shatter said that the board had "compounded and exacerbated this failure by its complicity in aggressively opposing their claim for damages in the High Court and, when finally settling the proceedings brought by them, in refusing to acknowledge its negligent liability".