Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail)

I am sure the Tánaiste will agree that the documentary aired by the BBC last Tuesday night about how the Catholic Church had dealt with child abuse in 1975 was another shocking chapter in a sad litany of which we are only too well aware from reading reports such as the Ryan, Murphy and Cloyne reports. He will also agree that the church's inaction on that occasion led to many more vulnerable, defenceless people being abused. I suggest everybody in the House will agree that every citizen has now and always had at least a moral obligation to report any abuse to the civil authorities. The Taoiseach said in a speech to the House, presumably with the agreement of the Government, last July in the wake of the Cloyne report, "Today the Catholic Church needs to be a penitent church. A church truly and deeply penitent for the horrors it perpetrated, hid and denied." In the light of that comment and the revelations made in the BBC documentary, what is the Government's position or does it have one on the standing and future of Cardinal Brady, head of the Catholic Church in Ireland?

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