Role of the Garda:Specialist Garda child protection units should be established to deal with child sex abuse victims and carry out investigations, the Ferns inquiry has recommended.
It also suggests that all members of An Garda Síochána should be trained to interview child sex abuse victims in a manner that would create for them a secure and trauma-free reporting environment.
Although the inquiry concluded that allegations of child sex abuse were handled properly by gardaí in the Ferns diocese after 1990, it expressed serious concern about Garda investigations before this date.
It was aware that some complaints of child sexual abuse were made to individual gardaí in the 1970s and 1980s, but could find no record of these anywhere.
In respect of the first incident of child abuse recorded by the Garda, involving the parish priest at Monageer, it notes that one member of the force was instructed to take written statements from the schoolgirls making the allegations and that another member spoke to the accused priest.
However, after these initial actions the Garda procedures failed. The inquiry noted:
"It does not appear that any further investigation took place. Such statements and files as were prepared were not forwarded to the Director of Public Prosecutions. Subsequently those files disappeared."
Elsewhere in the report the inquiry team notes that the failure of certain authorities to keep adequate records was a "significant factor in the failure to deal effectively with the problem of abuse which has existed in the Diocese of Ferns".
It said in respect of allegations made before 1990 that there was a reluctance on the part of some gardaí to investigate some cases of child sex abuse that came to their attention.
"Such reluctance was neither appropriate nor adequate," it said.
However, it supported the findings of an internal Garda inquiry into the Monageer affair in 1996, which concluded that "there was no evidence of any intervention by members of the clergy or the hierarchy with the investigation at the time".
The report recommended a much stricter environment within the Garda in relation to allegations of child sex abuse.
It suggests that all gardaí should be obliged to provide their superiors with a written explanation when they decide not to investigate an allegation or refer a case to the DPP. It also recommends that a written record of any allegation of child sex abuse should be created immediately after it is reported.
