A state investigation into the Catholic diocese of Cloyne cannot produce its findings by the set date because the government has taken three months to produce its terms of reference. Half the time allocated for the commission's inquiry has elapsed before it has even begun its work.

A spokesperson for the Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation has confirmed the July 2009 deadline for its report will have to be renegotiated as the terms of reference were only issued last Tuesday, 31 March. The delay in issuing the terms gives the commission an unfeasible three months to put all parties on notice, collate and analyse documents, take oral evidence and write the report.

On 7 January last, following the eventual publication in December of a scathing report on Cloyne by the National Board for Safeguarding Children, the junior health minister responsible for children, Barry Andrews, instructed judge Yvonne Murphy's commission to examine the handling of complaints of clerical child sexual abuse in the diocese run by Bishop John Magee. Announcing his decision on 7 January, Andrews set "six months from today" as the deadline for the commission to conclude its work.

The Cloyne report, which was suppressed for six months after it was completed last June, found Cloyne's handling of complaints to be wholly inadequate and "at times, dangerous". Following calls by victims for the resignation of the Bishop of Cloyne, the archbishop of Cashel and Emly, Dermot Clifford, was appointed apostolic administrator to the diocese last month when the church announced Magee would be fully occupied preparing for the commission's inquiry.

Clifford, who has been privately meeting complainants of abuse since taking over, addressed a meeting of about 100 Cloyne priests at an "internal" meeting at the Silver Springs Hotel in Cork last Monday night. The meeting was also attended by Bishop Denis Brennan of Ferns but not by Magee. Asked if Brennan attended to talk about the Ferns' experience, a diocesan spokesman said he could not divulge details of what was discussed.

In a significant personnel switch in the diocese, former Maynooth professor of moral theology Monsignor Denis O'Callaghan, who was previously in charge of handling abuse complaints in Cloyne, has retired as vicar general in the diocese and has been replaced by Dean Eamon Gould, the parish priest of Middleton.

The inter-diocesan case-management committee shared between Cloyne and Limerick, and whose ability to perform its function was questioned in the Cloyne report, has been disbanded. That committee had threatened last year to rely on civil and canon law to prevent the NBSC's report being published. The selection of a new committee is underway. A Dublin-based firm of solicitors has also been engaged as legal advisor to the diocese.