The Government is to appoint an Ombudsman for Children under a series of measures to protect children from abuse which are to be announced tomorrow.
Legislation will be submitted to the Government for approval by the end of the year, the Minister for Children at the Department of Health, Mr Frank Fahey, told The Irish Times.
It will contain procedures for appointing the Ombudsman and the term of office. Further details, including the staffing of the office, have yet to be worked out.
If the legislation is published early next year and introduced into the Dail before the summer, the Office of Ombudsman for Children is likely to be a reality in 2000.
Pressure for such an office has come from campaigners for children's rights. The report of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child pointed out that there was no mechanism in this State to vindicate children's rights.
Nor was there any way children could raise their own problems and complaints.
The Ombudsman for Children will monitor the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. A complaints procedure will be established, with the power to investigate individual complaints in relation to both public and private bodies.
The Ombudsman will also have the power to comment on the need for administrative or statutory reform.
When established on a statutory basis, the Ombudsman for Children will have contact with children on all matters relating to their welfare. It will be an independent office responsible to the Oireachtas.
Although its decisions will not be legally binding, it will be able to take legal action on behalf of children and the outcome of such action would be binding on those it was taken against.
Mr Fahey recently met Mr Trond Waage, the Norwegian Ombudsman for Children, and features of the Norwegian model of the office are likely to be incorporated into the Irish one.