LABOUR PARTY:THE LABOUR Party has called for a Garda investigation into Cardinal Brady's role in the canonical inquiry into child sex abuser Fr Brendan Smyth.
The party’s spokeswoman on social and family affairs, Roisín Shortall, said yesterday the cardinal was “hopelessly compromised by what had emerged”.
“I believe that there should be a Garda investigation to determine whether or not the failure to report Fr Smyth’s crimes to the civil authorities was, itself, a criminal offence,” she said.
“I am advised that the administering of an oath requiring these children not to disclose the abuse to anyone else may also have constituted an offence.”
Rape Crisis Network Ireland (RCNI) director Fiona Neary said Cardinal Brady’s position was now untenable, and called for him to resign immediately.
“Cardinal Brady is personally implicated in collusion with clerical child sexual abuse,” she said.
The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre (DRCC) demanded an end to what it called “the shameful saga of repeated cover-ups of child sexual abuse in the Church”.
“We believe we now need inquiries into all dioceses in Ireland,” said Ellen O’Malley-Dunlop, chief executive of the DRCC.
