The membership of the Catholic Church's National Board for Child Protection was finally announced yesterday.
The announcement was made following the organisation's first meeting of 2007.
Though the board has been meeting since May of last year, their names had not been made public and only the name of its chairman, the Hon Anthony Hederman, former attorney general and Supreme Court judge, had been released.
There are eight others on the board from both the Republic and the North: Sr Martina Barrett is a trained psychologist; Aidan Canavan, a solicitor, was member of the Parades Commission for Northern Ireland; Brian D Matthews, solicitor, has served for 10 years as a member of the Child Protection Task Force of the Conference of Religious of Ireland; Fr Paul McCafferty is moderator of the diocesan curia for the diocese of Derry and is a canon lawyer; Rosaleen McElvaney, a clinical psychologist, served on the committee to advise the Bishops' Conference on matters relating to the Laffoy commission; John Morgan, corporate lawyer, served as chairman of the Bishops' Committee on Child Protection from 2002 to 2006; Jean Pound, a school principal from Clare, has worked in an advisory capacity with the Department of Education and Science; Michael Ringrose is chief executive of People with Disabilities in Ireland.
Mr Hederman said the board would shortly recruit for the position of CEO for the church's new National Office for Child Protection.
"The board will monitor the implementation of church child protection policies and procedures and publish an annual report on its findings."
