The Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children has said that more than 780,000 calls were made to its Childline telephone service last year. But a lack of resources meant only one in five calls were answered.
Releasing the statistics yesterday, the organisation's chief executive, Mr Paul Gilligan, said it was committed to improving the rate. "The service is not happy that so many calls go unanswered and is committed to the challenge of striving to answer all calls."
More than 786,000 calls were made to Childline in 2003, an increase of 72 per cent on the previous year. Of the 158,503 calls answered, 59 per cent involved full two-way "interaction" between the caller and Childline.
Some 8 per cent of these calls concerned sexual issues; 4 per cent concerned physical abuse; 3 per cent were about pregnancy; 3 per cent concerned boyfriend/girlfriend relationships; 3 per cent were about relationships with parents.
Bullying accounted for 2 per cent and 2 per cent were about sexual abuse. The largest proportion of calls (35 per cent), were described as "basic engagement" and 16 per cent involved the caller ringing to chat.
An independent review into the service, which was also published yesterday, noted that Childline was set up in 1988 to cater for children in trouble or danger but now positioned itself as a listening service which children could contact regardless of whether they had a problem.
It recommended that Childline consider if this unintentionally deprived children in need of protection and if restricting the time given to children calling for "a chat" be considered.
However, it also noted: "Childline's rationale for facilitating open-ended chats of relatively long duration is that a child who calls for a chat on one occasion may be testing the service and may call with a problem on another occasion."
Launching the Childline review, the Minister of State for Children, Mr Brian Lenihan, said the service carried out vital work. "Children are at the heart of Irish life, representing approximately one third of the population.
"The first goal of the National Children's Strategy is that children will have a voice in matters which affect them, and their views will be given due weight in accordance with their age and maturity."