The State was abrogating its responsibility to protect children and there was no political will to implement recommendations on child abuse in the Ferns report, an Oireachtas committee was told yesterday.
Colm O'Gorman, founder of the One in Four group, addressed the Oireachtas committee on education on child protection issues arising from the recommendation in the report into clerical child sexual abuse.
He said the report was one of the most significant documents to emerge in terms of child protection over the past 20 years. There was appalling abuse, but if the report was to have any purpose the recommendations must be implemented.
"In our view, the State has abrogated its responsibility to children," he said. "There is no political will to implement the recommendations and we as a nation don't give it the importance it deserves."
There was an attitude in the way the State had handed over to the voluntary sector, be it churches or boards of management, so the whole concept was based on charity rather than rights, he said.
The group called for the vetting of all personnel who would be working with children.
There should also be a national register of sex offenders and the recording of "soft information". This was material not substantive enough to allow specific allegations to be made but indicating a clear sense something was wrong.
"If we simply rely on criminal convictions we are not properly looking after and protecting our children," Mr O'Gorman said.
Reckless endangerment, where someone wilfully and recklessly ignored information of abuse, should be an offence, as it was in the US, he said.
"As it is now, a bishop or a board of management can simply ignore if somebody was raping a child and move them to other posts because it is not a criminal offence," he said.
The investigation into the Dublin archdiocese would appal everybody, he said.
They could listen to Ferns and do something about it or they would all be back again in two years discussing the same things, he added.
"We're not talking about the State taking over completely. We're talking about the State having the responsibility to ensure the protection of children and be accountable," Mr O'Gorman said.