Caroline O'Doherty on how badly the Catholic Church has handledsex abuse allegations
Bishop Brendan Comiskey might be the first bishop to resign over the behaviour of a priest under his authority, but he is not the first cleric to have lacked the "concerted approach", as he called it, needed to tackle the problem.
Others also failed to deal appropriately or adequately with errant clergy.
A glance at evidence from court cases in recent years reveals the impotence of church authorities in dealing with sex abuse priests and the added torment their inaction caused the victims.
The most infamous case, that of Father Brendan Smyth, highlighted the church's failure most vividly.
The serial abuser was finally brought to account when he pleaded guilty to 74 incidents of sexual abuse of 20 young people over a period of 36 years.
Those years were spent in numerous parishes in the Republic and the North where his behaviour was known to fellow clergy, a number of bishops and, in later years, Cardinal Cahal Daly.
They tried moving him around and sent him for counselling but his abuse continued until the law stopped him.
The Archdiocese of Dublin apparently thought it had dealt with Father Ivan Payne when it received a complaint about him in 1981 but three years later he abused a young boy.
Two years ago that boy, now a young man, received an out of court settlement from the archdiocese. It was the second such payment made on Payne's behalf. In 1993, he was given a loan of over €30,000 to privately compensate another of his victims.
In 1997 the Bishop of Kerry, Dr William Murphy, in a letter to Masses, lamented the failure of his predecessor, the late Bishop Diarmuid Ó Suilleabháin, to deal with complaints of sexual abuse by a priest against a young girl.
The girl's efforts to draw attention to her plight emerged in court when Father John Brosnan was jailed after admitting 13 charges of abusing five children from 1977 to 1985 when he was chaplain at their school.
Father Martin Greaney from Tuam was sentenced in 1997 to seven years on 12 sample charges of indecently assaulting eight girls in a number of parishes over an 11 year period.
The court heard the church authorities had been attempting to rehabilitate him by sending him to a church-run therapy centre at Stroud in England.