The challenge of securing the adequate protection of children remains "an uphill climb" in Ireland, the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, said yesterday.
At the annual Mass to mark the start of the new law term, Dr Martin said the State, church and civil society are working, "hopefully together", to secure adequate protection for children in the aftermath of "clear failures" in the past.
Dr Martin also said citizens are troubled by "any scent of corruption in the administration of justice", the cost of defending basic rights, and about the protection and care they receive when they are ill. People were also concerned about the elderly, the marginalised and minorities in the face of violence or intolerance.
"Citizens are troubled by any scent of corruption in the administration of justice and indeed citizens are troubled even when those who have committed crime are not protected," Dr Martin told the congregation at St Michan's Catholic Church, Halston Street, Dublin, which included many judges of the Supreme and High Courts and visiting judges and other members of the legal profession from Northern Ireland and Britain.
Dr Martin said people are troubled when the defence of basic rights and legal entitlements becomes so expensive for the poorest. "The law is there to repress crime and to protect citizens. It is there especially to protect the weakest and to curb the ambition of the arrogant.
"Lack of integrity at any level of the system of the administration of justice or in the personal behaviour of those who bear responsibility within it inevitably damages the credibility of the system itself," he said.
The widening gap between rich and poor in Irish society and the evils of racism were highlighted in the address by Dr Dudley Levinstone Cooney of the Methodist Church in Ireland to the annual service at St Michan's Church of Ireland also marking the opening of the new law term.
"Do we not live in a society where some are growing increasingly rich while many others find it very difficult to make ends meet?" he asked. Addressing senior judges and barristers, Dr Levinstone Cooney said he was very impressed they had come to church to acknowledge to God their responsibility for administration of the law. Why, he asked, was there not a similar service for the members of the Oireachtas who make the laws?
He recently met a young man in Dublin from the Far East who had been attacked by a number of youths here and had one of his eyes knocked out with a hammer. "Ireland of the welcomes or Ireland for the Irish?" Dr Levinstone Cooney remarked.