The Minister for Justice has rejected claims by the ISPCC that the State could become a safe haven for paedophiles fleeing from stringent laws protecting children which have been promised by the British government.
Responding to a statement from the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (ISPCC) calling for the urgent implementation of additional measures to monitor and treat convicted paedophiles, Mr O'Donoghue said laws would be enacted here before the end of the year.
"The Sex Offenders Bill 2000 will require sex offenders coming into this country from abroad to register with the Garda in the same way as persons convicted here for the same offence.
"This is to ensure that this country is not used as a sanctuary by persons escaping notification requirements in other countries," he said.
Mr Paul Gilligan, the chief executive of the ISPCC, acknowledged that considerable work had been done on the Bill.
However, he stressed that if the proposals did not become law soon there was a danger that paedophiles would be attracted here.
Last week the British Home Office Minister, Mr Paul Boateng, pledged that laws protecting children would be strengthened in the wake of the killing of schoolgirl Sarah Payne.
"We already have anecdotal evidence that paedophiles have come here for short periods of time and that abusers will take any risk to get near children. "We don't want a situation where there will be a name and shame campaign here with people taking the law into their own hands. We need the new laws very soon," added Mr Gilligan.
The Fine Gael spokesman on children, Mr Dan Neville, criticised the Minister for the delay in the introduction of the register. He claimed that the Bill could have completed its committee stage in July, which would have allowed a faster passage when the Dail resumes.
The ISPCC statement yesterday called for the public to be given "controlled access" to the new register and for formalisation of information exchange protocols between Ireland and all European countries, particularly Britain. Mr Gilligan said the new protocols should oblige police to automatically inform another country that a paedophile was "on the move".
The group also called for mandatory reporting of child abuse to be given a legislative basis, for the introduction of compulsory prison treatment for child abusers and for their progress to be monitored.
An abuser's name should only be removed from a register on the assurances of those working with them that they no longer present a risk, added the statement.
A spokesman for the Department of Justice said the new register would involve gardai liasing with the relevant agencies to conduct a risk assessment on offenders. The names would be released on a strict "need to know" basis.
Full public access to a register would discourage paedophiles from registering, he said.
Mr John Nisbet, of the Children at Risk in Ireland Foundation, said he welcomed the register but stressed it could not be seen as the ultimate solution to paedophilia as it had been estimated that up to 70 per cent of child abusers are members of the child's own family and not strangers.
EU states should harmonise their laws so they can restrict the movement of people who have finished custodial sentences for serious sex abuse offences, the Fine Gael MEP for Munster, Mr John Cushnahan, said in a statement. Ways in which police forces in various member-states can be made aware of the arrival of known paedophiles from other countries should also be devised, he said. This could involve an exchange of national registers of sex offenders or the compiling of an EU-wide register.