Justice Minister Alan
Shatter (pictured) has said that Irish courts may protect priests from prosecution who
refuse to violate the seal of Confession under proposed Government legislation
making it a crime not to disclose allegations about child sexual
abuse.

Speaking in the
Seanad in a debate on the Criminal Justice (Withholding of Information on
Offences against Children and Vulnerable Persons) Bill on Thursday, Mr Shatter said that if a case regarding
the seal of Confession arose, it would be a matter for a court to decide whether
the seal was protected. 

He said there had
been “a lot of media comment suggesting that this Bill has an effect on the
‘seal of confession’ or sacerdotal privilege.”  

He said that there
was no exemption for, or reference to the seal of Confession in the Offences
Against the State (Amendment) Act 1998 which
makes it an offence to withhold information in respect of a serious criminal
offence, and that this was also the case with the proposed Bill.

 However, he added:
“It will continue to be a matter for any court before which a person is
prosecuted to determine whether any particular privilege exists or applies in
the circumstances of any particular case.”

Mr Shatter said:
“I think it is worth stating that the issue of sacerdotal privilege has never
arisen with regard to the offences prescribed by the 2006 Act nor in relation to
the offences in this Bill which are currently covered by the Offences Against
the State (Amendment) Act 1998.

“It should be
borne in mind that the issue of confession does not arise in regard to the many
cases of criminal offences identified in the Ryan, Murphy or Cloyne Reports.

“These reports
all relate to complaints of abuse made to the church authorities by the victims
or by family members or by members of the public.

“Nor, as far we
know, is it an issue with regard to the reprehensible activities of the late
Father Brendan Smyth and many of the other priests who have during the past two
decades been convicted and sentenced in this State for child abuse.”

Last month, Minister
for Children Frances Fitzgerald said that priests would be required to reveal
what they had heard in Confession.

“We haven’t made any
exclusions or exemptions,” she said in response to a question from Sean O’Rourke
on RTE Radio’s News at One as to whether the seal of Confession would be
protected by the law. “Everybody’s under an obligation to report.” 

Priests have said
they would not break the seal of confession. Fr Sean McDonagh of the Association
of Catholic Priests, which represents 800 clergymen, told the Irish Independent
that he wouldn’t be willing to break the seal of confession for
anyone”.

Auxiliary Bishop of
Dublin Raymond Field said: “The seal of the confessional is inviolable as far as
I am concerned, and that’s the end of the matter.” 

The Catholic Church
has always insisted it has no problem with the reporting of child physical and
sexual abuse allegations to the authorities — except when the information is
given during confession.

The Association of
Catholic Priests said the legislation was a foolish move that could not be
enforced. 

Its spokesman, Fr
McDonagh, recalled how a New Zealand Columban priest, Francis Douglas, was
tortured to death by the Japanese during World War Two because he refused to
reveal information received in confession about the Filipino
guerrillas.

“He is held up to us
as a model of how you deal with this extraordinary sacrament. You shouldn’t put
into legislation something that cannot be enforced. “It makes a mockery of the
legislation,” he said. 

Fr McDonagh pointed
out that confessions were held in private so that priests did not know who was
in the confessional box.

Last year, leading
criminal barrister Paul Anthony McDermott branded the Government plan “one of
the daftest ideas to come out in recent years”. 

Speaking about the
proposal on RTE’s Frontline, he said that the idea of breaking the seal of
confession made little sense when confession is “anonymous; you don’t have to
give your name, you don’t give your address, you don’t give your PPS
number.”

He added, “So if that
law was passed as it is, it would almost certainly be found unconstitutional,
because the first thing a court would say to the Government is, why are you
breaking the seal of confession for child abuse, but not murder? “So if you’re
going to put forward a law, you have to put it forward on a rational
basis.”