A website formerly owned by the Catholic diocese of Limerick now appears to be a site containing pornographic material.
When the words "Limerick" and "diocese" are typed into some search engines, the first site the viewer is offered is www.limerick-diocese.org.
This was the address of the Limerick diocese's original website and the one still listed in this year's Catholic Directory.
When the diocese updated its original site, the hyphen was removed from the address to create the more user-friendly www.limerickdiocese.org. The original site was retained.
The current edition of the Limerick Leader reported that both domain names were obtained from the American company, Network Solutions
The original, hyphenated site address was sold to an Armenian company that transformed it into an adult site - without the knowledge of the diocese.
Ms Lena Barry, a solicitor with Leahy and Partners solicitors in Limerick, said her client, the diocese, was taking legal action against Network Solutions Inc. She said she wanted to stress her client was no longer the owner of the website that featured pornographic material.
"We were the registered owner. That lapsed through an error on their \Network Solutions part," she said. She said this had allowed an Armenian company buy the site.
The adult site offers access to 42 "premiere adult sites" with an instant trial access for $4.25 allowing users to view a selection of adult material for three days. The website contains an offer to sell the domain name, www.limerick-diocese.org. It says any offer under $550 will be ignored.
