Powers providing for the enforcement of new child-abuse guidelines to be published today have been dropped by the Department of Health and Children, The Irish Times understands.
The working party which produced the guidelines recommended that regional child protection committees should have the power to review how a health board had handled the cases of specific children. The regional committee would include representatives of voluntary organisations and of professional groups such as teachers and doctors, as well as health board officials.
It is understood that this was seen by the working party as a key mechanism in enforcing the guidelines. These outline what professionals, sports bodies, health boards and others should do when faced with concerns about child abuse.
The health boards are understood to have opposed the granting of such powers to outside bodies and to have forwarded legal advice to the Department of Health and Children to support their case.
Some members of the working party are said to be furious that what they saw as a vital means of enforcing the guidelines was removed by the Department.
Today's guidelines do not include any such mandatory element. But if mandatory reporting is introduced - the Government is committed to introducing it but some observers doubt the strength of the commitment in the face of opposition from health officials and social workers - the guidelines published today will, in effect, become mandatory.
However, supporters of mandatory reporting are said to have seen the investigative authority which the working party wanted to give to regional child protection committees as providing a powerful means of ensuring the guidelines are followed even in the absence of a mandatory reporting law.
The working party spent 18 months producing the guidelines under the chairmanship of Ms Maureen Lynott, who is director of provider affairs at BUPA Ireland.