Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 26 Sep 1996

Vol. 469 No. 2

Written Answers. - Child Sexual Abuse Allegations.

Liz O'Donnell

Question:

39 Ms O'Donnell asked the Minister for Health the number of allegations of child sexual abuse which have been reported to each health board in each of the past three years; the number of cases which have been confirmed and reported to the Garda during this period; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [16962/96]

Minister of State at the Department of Health (Mr. Currie)

The statistical information requested by the Deputy is contained in the following tables. I would point out, however, that the April 1995 guidelines concerning the notification of suspected cases of child abuse between health boards and Garda require health boards to formally notify the Garda of all cases where they suspect that a child has been physically or sexually abused or wilfully neglected and not just those cases where abuse has been confirmed. My Department has information on the number of cases notified to the Garda only since the introduction of the guidelines and this information is supplied in table 2.

Table 1

Number of reports of child sex abuse received and confirmed by health boards 1993-95

	1993	1994	1995
Received	Confirmed	Received	Confirmed	Received	Confirmed
Eastern Health Board	751	291	709	223	863	264
Midland Health Board	168	55	217	66	249	68
Mid-Western Health Board	153	45	156	38	208	64
North-Eastern Health Board	143	63	158	71	201	71
North-Western Health Board	75	29	68	17	100	39
South-Eastern Health Board	187	83	210	82	339	156
Southern Health Board	162	48	166	32	289	73
Western Health Board	154	67	132	28	192	30

Table 2

Suspected cases of child sex abuse reported by health boards to the Garda (May 1995-end June 1996)

Health Board	Reported cases
Eastern Health Board (June-December 1995)	418
Midland Health Board	107
Mid-Western Health Board	50
North-Eastern Health Board	98
North-Western Health Board	45
South-Eastern Health Board	87
Southern Health Board	104
Western Health Board	27