Bishops 'should have made submission'

The Bishop of Killaloe, Dr Willie Walsh, said yesterday it was "regrettable" that the bishops' conference did not make a formal submission on the age of consent to the Oireachtas Committee on Child Protection.

Dr Walsh said he accepted that the bishops should have made a submission if invited to do so, but it appeared that the committee's invitation to do so had gone to "the wrong place".

A spokesman for the hierarchy had accused the Minister for Justice Michael McDowell of being incorrect when he stated on RTÉ Radio's Saturday View programme that the bishops had been invited to make a submission to the Oireachtas committee.

Correspondence obtained by The Irish Times, however, revealed that the committee wrote to the Bishops' Committee on Child Protection during the summer seeking its views on the age of consent.

Speaking on Clare FM yesterday, Dr Walsh said: "It is certainly regrettable that we didn't make a submission."

He added: "I accept the fact that if we were invited, we should have made a submission, but it would appear that the request from the Government went to the wrong place and the result was that there wasn't any submission made and I accept that that was regrettable, but it was a mistake."

Dr Walsh said: "It was only on Saturday morning I asked our own communications person to find out if we did in fact receive an invitation to make a submission and he checked with our secretariat and they had no trace of it whatsoever."

A spokesman for the hierarchy said on Sunday that the secretariat of the Irish Bishops' Conference, and not the commissions and agencies of the Irish Episcopal Conference, was the body to which the invitation should have been addressed.

Speaking on the age of consent issue in Ennis, Co Clare, at the weekend, Dr Walsh said that the proposal to reduce the age of consent puts pressure on 16-year-olds to start engaging in sexual activity.

"People aren't allowed to vote until they're 18 and we see 18 as a figure accepted by society which somehow marks the passage into adulthood," he said.