Claims by the Government that child protection is a top priority are “a load of rubbish”, a leading expert in the 
area has said.
Dr Helen Buckley of The Children’s Research Centre in Trinity College Dublin, one of the authors of a report into clerical child abuse in the Ferns diocese made the remarks in an interview with the Irish Catholic as it emerged that the HSE intends to slash funding for family and child support services by up to 20 per cent.
According to a report in that paper, the HSE is warning child and family support charities to expect funding cuts of between 10 and 20 per cent in HSE funding after December’s budget.
Expressing shock at the scale of the proposed cuts, Dr Buckley called the cuts ”savage” and said that ”cutbacks in frontline services are very retrograde and are going to exacerbate the problem [of child protection] greatly”.
She said that the scandal around the failure of the Church to report child abuse has attracted a ”not unwarranted — but disproportionate — amount of attention, when you look at the amount of vulnerable children now being deprived of services”.
Dr Buckley said: “”Members of the public are far more interested in getting at the Catholic Church than they are [serious] about the concern they express about children who are in need.”
She says child neglect, as distinct from abuse, is ”not a sexy topic” while ”clerical abuse is of huge media and public interest.
Dr Buckley expressed annoyance at how ”a few weeks ago, Eamon Gilmore said ‘this Government is committed to child protection’. I remember thinking, ‘that’s a load of rubbish’.
”This Government doesn’t understand what child protection is.
”Their version of child protection is strengthening legislation which affects about 5pc of children.
”What they are actually doing is cutting back on child protection. That’s the reality of what the Government is doing.”
Dr Buckley cited 2008 HSE statistics which indicate that almost 90pc of the more than 24,000 child abuse reports made in 2008 were not confirmed as reaching the threshold at which they would be considered child abuse.
She said: ”Often cases falling below the threshold still contain very vulnerable children who could benefit from early intervention to prevent further worsening of their situations … if the Government is serious about protecting children, it should be investing more in community-based services, which would ultimately relieve the pressure on the statutory end of the system.
”On the contrary, the principal focus at present seems to be quite narrow, focusing on legislation which will not make an appreciable difference to the large numbers of neglected and vulnerable children that require help.”