Shortall calls for Garda inquiry into Cardinal's role in Fr. Smyth case
Issued : Monday 15 March, 2010
Statement by Roisin Shortall TD
Minister of State, Department of Health with responsibility for Primary Care
People have been shocked to the core by what they have heard in regard to the involvement of Cardinal Brady in the canonical inquiry into child sex abuser, Fr. Brendan Smyth.
The Cardinal is hopelessly compromised by what has emerged over the weekend.
It is bad enough that children should have been abused by a priest but it is almost beyond belief that these children should also have been required to take an oath that they would not disclose the abuse to anyone.
Subsequent to 1975 Fr. Brendan Smyth went on to abuse other children both in Ireland and the United States. Had these offences been reported to the police, as they should have been, then Fr. Smyth would have been subjected to a court process and hopefully put behind bars and innocent children might have been spared the subsequent abuse he inflicted.
I was totally shocked by the comments made on RTE this morning by Monsignor Maurice Dooley, former Professor of Canon Law, who said Cardinal Brady had no obligation to report anything to gardai. He seemed to be claiming that clerics were not subject to the civil law. In a democratic Republic all citizens, regardless of their status, must be subject to the law of the state.
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. 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.
I am also calling on the Minister for Justice to let the public know what has happened in regard to the Garda investigation into matters highlighted in the Murphy Report. When the Report was published last November, the Minister for Justice said that as soon as he had received the report ( which was in the previous July) he had referred it to the Garda Authorities, but we have heard nothing since.
