A parish priest accused of child sex abuse continues to remain in ministry in the archdiocese of Cashel and Emly.
When contacted by The Irish Times about allegations against its priests last week, the archdiocese said "the diocese received allegations against two priests. Neither of them is still working in the diocese."
A spokesman for the archdiocese agreed yesterday that a parish priest currently serving there had been accused of child sex abuse in another parish there in the early 1990s and that a file on the case had been sent to the DPP, who did not press charges.
The archdiocese spokesman also agreed that at no time did the priest stand aside from ministry following receipt of the allegation, although he had been placed on "limited ministry" for a period. He said the local health authorities as well as the Garda "were aware of the situation."
These details had not been disclosed last week as the archdiocese did not realise then that the woman making the allegations had been a minor at the time of the alleged offence, he said.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the diocese of Ferns disclosed yesterday that there had been three separate trawls of diocesan files since 2002 for documentation relevant to child sex abuse allegations.
The first took place in July 2002 at the instigation of George Birmingham SC, who was conducting an investigation into the sort of State inquiry to be held into clerical child sex abuse allegations in Ferns. Essentially, he needed to satisfy himself that co-operation would be provided by the relevant church-State authorities.
A "very extensive" trawl was undertaken in 2003 for the Ferns inquiry, which sat from that September. There was a third trawl last July after the inquiry became aware of documentation concerning "Fr Iota" for the first time, which had not been provided. A further trawl was undertaken last July and it uncovered documentation relating to a further eight priests which had not been provided to the inquiry.
Material concerning three of the priests was discounted as not relevant to its terms of reference. The remaining five were dealt with in an appendix to the report.
The Ferns spokesman said the documentation had not been provided to the inquiry earlier because "therapists" had deemed it not relevant to it.
