[caption id="attachment_71574" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Cardinal Sean Brady."]
Ireland's politicians have called for the head of Catholic church in the country to resign over a pedophile priest scandal.
The calls followed a BBC documentary which revealed that Cardinal Sean Brady failed to act when alerted to abuse allegations nearly 40 years
ago when he was a young priest.
The documentary revealed that in 1975, a 14-year-old boy who had been sexually abused by notorious pedophile priest, Fr Brendan Smyth, gave the then Fr. Brady the names and addresses of other children who had been abused.
It said Fr Brady did not pass on the details to the police or parents and Smyth (since deceased) went on to abuse other children.
Northern Ireland's deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness, said Catholics would be "dismayed" by the new allegations.
He added: "Two years ago when this issue first emerged, I described the situation as grave and said that Cardinal Brady should consider his position.
"Ultimately, Cardinal Brady's response is a matter for himself and the church, but it is a very grave situation for survivors of abuse, for the Catholic Church and for Catholics across Ireland.
"Speaking personally, I believe he should reflect on the wisdom of this position which will leave many Catholics wondering whether anything is to be done by the leadership of the Catholic Church to ring the changes which many believe are required at such a sad time for all."
Speaking in the Dáil, Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore said anyone in the Catholic Church who failed to deal effectively with child abuse should not hold office.
"I've always believed in the separation of church and state," he said.
"I think it is the job of government and of the state to enact our laws and to ensure that those laws apply to everybody whether they belong to a church or not. But it is my own personal view that anybody who did not deal with the scale of the abuse that we have seen in this case should not hold a position of authority."
And more pressure was heaped on the cardinal by the leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, Alasdair McDonnell, who said he should resign.
"Wrong decisions were made in 1975 and subsequently decisions that affected lives," he said.
"Cardinal Brady set for himself in 2010 the criteria by which he would judge as to whether or not he should resign his position. In my mind, and in the minds of many Catholics from all parts of the church, those criteria have been met."
However, the cardinal has said that he will not resign.
"With others, I feel betrayed that those who had the authority in the church to stop Brendan Smyth failed to act on the evidence I gave them.
"However, I also accept that I was part of an unhelpful culture of deference and silence in society, and the church, which thankfully is now a thing of the past."
He also went on to accuse the BBC of exaggerating his authority in the program.
"The commentary in the program and much of the coverage of my role in this inquiry gives the impression that I was the only person who knew of the allegations against Brendan Smyth at that time and that because of the office I hold in the church today I somehow had the power to stop Brendan Smyth in 1975.
"I had absolutely no authority over Brendan Smyth. Even my bishop had limited authority over him. The only people who had authority within the church to stop Brendan Smyth from having contact with children were his abbot in the monastery in Kilnacrott and his religious superiors in the Norbertine Order."
