Support group demands into Archbishop McQuaid sex abuse allegations
The Government today faced calls for an investigation into allegations of sexual abuse involving the former Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid.
Senior garda are investigating two complaints made against the senior cleric, who was the head of the Catholic Church in the capital between 1940-1972. He died a year later.
The Church in Dublin has refused to confirm an Irish Times report that Dr McQuaid was the subject of two complaints made by two men who alleged they were assaulted when they were young boys.
Support group One In Four said if true, the allegations show the sexual abuse of children extended to the very highest levels in the Irish Catholic Church.
Director Maeve Lewis said: "Dr McQuaid was Archbishop of Dublin for over 30 years and was at that time possibly the most powerful, influential and feared man in Ireland.
"If Archbishop McQuaid was, as is alleged, a sex offender himself, then it is no wonder that the secrecy and cover-ups which have characterised the Church's handling of sexual abuse was so entrenched."
The Murphy Commission revealed it received an allegation about a cleric in 2009 as it finalised its damning report into decades of clerical abuse by paedophile priests in Dublin.
Hundreds of crimes against defenceless children from the 1960s to the 1990s went unreported, it said.
The three-year inquiry by Judge Yvonne Murphy revealed Catholic hierarchy was granted police immunity while four archbishops, obsessed with secrecy and avoiding scandal, protected abusers and reputations at all costs.
However, a supplementary report published on the commission's website in July - the same day as the damaging Cloyne report - revealed new information about a cleric had been received in June/July 2009 as it completed its work.
Ms Lewis called on Children's Minister Frances Fitzgerald to establish a sworn statutory inquiry.
"It is the only way to establish the truth of the matter," added Ms Lewis.
"If Dr McQuaid is innocent of the allegations then it will be an opportunity to restore his good name."
Dr McQuaid, who was also indirectly criticised in the Ryan report into abuse in industrial schools, once banned Catholics from attending Trinity College Dublin.
The Commission revealed a man made a complaint against a cleric to the Eastern Health Board in January 2003 - but that the information had not been handed over to the Commission by the Health Service Executive (HSE).
In May 2009 the complaint was made known to Phil Garland, then director of child protection in Dublin's archdiocese. Archbishop Diarmuid Martin immediately informed the commission and the HSE subsequently supplied relevant documentation to the commission.
The archdiocese also trawled its files and discovered a letter to its solicitor which showed an awareness among a number of people in the archdiocese that there had been a concern expressed about this cleric in 1999.
However, the commission said it was satisfied the HSE's failure to hand over the documentation was due to human error and that the Dublin archdiocese had no knowledge of the concern about the cleric.
Judge Murphy revealed Archbishop Martin told the commission last year he had received another abuse complaint against the same cleric.
"Archbishop Martin was under no obligation to give the commission this information," the commission added.
"At this stage, it is a matter for the Archdiocese to investigate all complaints against this cleric."
In a statement, the Archdiocese of Dublin said the matters in the supplementary report are now the subject of the ongoing investigation by An Gardaí, led by Assistant Commissioner John O'Mahony - who is examining all the findings of the Murphy report.
It added that it had not disclosed the identity of anyone whom the Commission decided it itself could not name in its reports.
Meanwhile, the HSE said it would be inappropriate to comment further than what was already in the supplementary report.
