Taoiseach Enda Kenny has confirmed his commitment to meeting with child sex abuse survivor Louise O'Keeffe after she challenged him to meet her to discuss the Government's delay in enacting child protection legislation in primary schools.
Mr Kenny said that, together with the Minister for Education Jan O’Sullivan, he plans to meet with Ms O’Keeffe shortly to discuss the Government’s approach to dealing with child protection on foot of the European Court of Human Rights judgement which found in favour of Ms O’Keeffe.
Last January, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Ireland had failed to meet its obligation to protect Ms O'Keeffe from abuse by school principal Leo Hickey while she was a pupil at Dunderrow National School in West Cork in the early 1970s.
In July, the Department of Education issued details of an action plan to address the issues raised by the European Court of Human Rights in its judgement, but Ms O’Keeffe said the action plan amounted to nothing more than a restatement of Ireland’s defence in the case.
She emailed Mr Kenny on August 2nd, extending an invitation to both him and Ms O’Sullivan to meet with herself, and other survivors of child sexual abuse in day schools, to put in place child protection measures to meet the requirements of the European Court of Human Rights ruling.
Ms O'Keeffe gave Mr Kenny two months to respond to her invite and when Mr Kenny was asked about it recently by The Irish Times, he said he would "be happy to meet" and a date for the meeting "was not too far distant", though he could not talk to her about matters still before the courts.
Ms O'Keeffe told The Irish Times that she raised the issue with Tánaiste Joan Burton at Network Ireland's national conference on September 26th and, later that day, she received an email from the Taoiseach's private secretary confirming his willingness to meet her.
“I would be inclined to think that Joan Burton had a word with the Taoiseach – the email coming the same day was too much of a coincidence – it confirmed that the Taoiseach would meet me, but not the other victims of child sex abuse in day schools because they had cases still pending,” she said.
Ms O’Keeffe said she was disappointed that Mr Kenny was unwilling to meet other victims of child sexual abuse, but that she was happy to go ahead and meet him and other ministers, even though she still felt that child protection was not a priority for this government.
"I don't think they see it as a priority – it's eight months on from the ruling in my case and we have had nothing – yet within five weeks of the Supreme Court ruling they were writing to other survivors to try and intimidate them into dropping their cases so they can move with speed when they want to.
"I don't know what the Taoiseach is going to say to me, I certainly hope he's not going to say the same as we have heard before because I've been listening to it in the High Court, the Supreme Court and in Europe and there's been no change in that so something new has to come.
“I’m harping back to the same thing all the time, particularly since Europe did find the state was responsible for the protection of children in national schools and what they put forward in July to the European Court of Human Rights was what we have been listening to in the courts for 15 years.”
