All the talk is how do we ensure that it never happens again. Given the overall conclusions of the Murphy report on the Diocese of Ferns that two bishops (Herlihy and Comiskey) bad, and one bishop (incumbent Éamonn Walsh) good, is it not now the case that we can all be assured that the Catholic Church has finally put its house in order and our children are safe? Well, no, writes Mary Raftery
One aspect that fairly leaps out of the Murphy report is the question of access, of how it was that so many priests were able to capture such a seemingly endless supply of small victims for their cruel and criminal acts of depravity.
This should be a critical question in the minds of each and every parent in this country. The Murphy report makes specific reference to the significant number of paedophile priests who had access to their victims by virtue of their central role of power within schools, at secondary and particularly at primary level.
The State has always run its primary education system along religious denominational lines. While the State pays the entire cost, the schools are actually run by the churches. What this means on the ground is that over 95 per cent of national schools are directly managed by the Catholic Church.
In all these cases, the local bishop is the patron of the school, which means that he has effective control through his statutory function to appoint the members of the board of management. These boards are invariably chaired by priests in the area.
For instance, Fr Seán Fortune was chair of the board of management of the primary school at Ballymurn. Canon Martin Clancy used his position as manager of his local school to gain access to and rape girls as young as nine. Fr Jim Grennan's abuse of children took place during school hours as he took them for confirmation classes.
Allegations against three other unnamed priests (identified only as Frs Gamma, Zeta and Omega) concern sexual abuse directly related to their activities in local schools.
In Ferns, it was Bishop Herlihy and after him Bishop Comiskey who appointed these priests to positions of such absolute power within the schools. In dioceses all over the country, for which we do not yet (and may never have) the benefit of a report to identify the scale of child rape by clerics, bishops and priests continue to enjoy enormous power over schools and the children within them.
It is undoubtedly true that the majority of priests and bishops do not abuse their control over our children. The Murphy report identifies severe failings within the culture of the Catholic Church, however, which it believes ultimately contributed to the abuse of so many children in Wexford. In other words, the failings in Ferns are endemic to the very nature of the institution itself.
Chief among these are celibacy and secrecy. It is important to be clear here. The internal rules which the Catholic Church adopts to regulate the behaviour of either its priests or its followers are entirely a matter for itself.
However, when it comes to handing over control of virtually our entire education system to an organisation whose very essence has now been unambiguously identified as a risk factor for children, then it is time to reassess in the most fundamental manner the way in which we as a State organise the education of our young people.
We have seen the effects recently of Catholic Church control of major components of our health system, through the scandalous attempts to block clinical drugs trials for cancer patients at the Mater and St Vincent's hospitals.
We now have incontrovertible evidence of the incalculable damage done to children resulting in part from Catholic Church control of our schools.
It may be instructive to look at how others have dealt with this problem. The people of Newfoundland in Canada faced during the 1980s and early 1990s an experience very similar to our own present turmoil. They had been deeply traumatised by revelations of widespread abuse of children by priests and Christian Brothers.
Like Ireland, Newfoundland had a structure of denominational control of its education and health services. In the space of only a few years, however, it engaged in a series of referendums which radically restructured the provision of these services, transferring them from the power of the various churches into the hands of the state.
At what point do we now in Ireland become mature enough as a society to say "enough, no more"? For the safety of our children, it has become imperative that we begin the process of wresting control of our schools from a group of individuals, namely the bishops, who are neither accountable nor answerable to any form of democratic control.
The issues of how our children are educated, who runs our schools and who has access to our children should all be matters for us, the people, to determine through our democratic institutions. They should no longer be subject to the dictates of a celibate, autocratic and secretive caste.