O'Gorman: Cardinal's defence 'just not good enough'
The founder of One in Four, Colm O'Gorman, has said that Cardinal Sean Brady's defence of his role in a 1975 abuse inquiry is "just not good enough".
Cardinal Brady responded today to allegations in a BBC documentary, saying it that a number of claims were made which seriously misrepresented his role in the 1975 church inquiry into Fr Brendan Smyth.
In a statement, Cardinal Brady highlighted a number of "important facts" to the programmes makers six weeks before the broadcast, most notably that the suggestion that he led the inquiry into the abuse allegations were "seriously misleading and untrue".
Cardinal Brady said that he was a "notary" at the meeting which was outlined in the programme, adding that even now the guidelines currently in place to ensure child protection in the Irish state make clear that the person "who first receives and records the details of an allegation of child abuse in an organisation that works with children, is not the person who has responsibility within that organisation for reporting the matter to the civil authorities".
O'Gorman has rejected both Brady's statement and the Vatican's earlier statement on the issue however, calling them "simply wrong".
"After nearly 20 years of this, I'm fed up to the eye teeth of being angry," he said.
"I'm fed up to the eye teeth of needing to come out and to talk about how simply wrong this is, and how simply wrong the defence of Sean Brady in 1975 or in 2012 by the Vatican for instance as we heard the morning, is.
"It's just not good enough."
Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources Pat Rabbitte echoed this view.
"This notion of, you know, ‘I did my bit’ and it was up to those who those higher up the chain to take decisions, is not an adequate explanation," he said.
"On a purely human basis, if you knew that there was a predatory paedophile in the community, I think as an ordinary citizen, I think you’d be minded to do something about it."
