The main allegation – that the Archbishop had attempted to sexually assault a boy in a Dublin pub – is based on an unpublished essay by Noel Browne.

[3] There is also an interesting account by Colum Kenny, Associate Professor of Communications at Dublin City University of a meeting he had with the Archbishop as a teenager in the 1960s.

[4] On 20 June 2009, it was revealed that in 1961 Archbishop McQuaid had established a hostel in Dublin for boys who had been in industrial schools – mainly Artane – and assigned priests to see to their spiritual welfare and to help them integrate into society.

As a result of the advice, McNamara insured the archdiocese to protect it financially, while not revealing the degree of clerical sex abuse recorded in diocesan files to the Garda Síochána as required in law.

[7] McNamara's role in these and other incidents were featured in an audit of child abuse cases associated with the Dublin archdiocese carried out at the request of Archbishop Diarmuid Martin.

The failure of Cardinal Desmond Connell to adequately address the abuse scandals in Dublin led the Vatican to replace him with Archbishop Martin in the country's largest diocese.

[8] Connell's tenure as Primate was marked by recurring and unchecked episodes of child sex abuse by priests and other religious personnel in the Archdiocese of Dublin.

[12] In November 2012 Mercer was arrested again on 39 charges of sexually assaulting a juvenile between 1 January 1986 and 22 February 1994, he was remanded on a bond of €2,500 and instructed to sign on twice weekly at Kilkenny Garda Station and stay with the Dominicans at Black Abbey and on 10 January Inspector Mary King applied to have him returned for trial by judge and jury to the next sitting of Cork Circuit Criminal Court on 4 February and Judge Con O'Leary granted the application.

Another child abuser was known to have been a priest in the college some years before Mercer although this article http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/opinion/local-view/3720465-local-view-retired-duluthian-still-healing-after-abuse-life-shame-and Archived 5 August 2015 at the Wayback Machine failed to name him any pupil from that era would know who he was as he was sent to India by the Dominicans when things got too embarrassing for them.

In February 2013, Mercer was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty at Cork Circuit Criminal Court to 15 sample counts of sexually assaulting the boy on various dates between 1986 and 1994.

He attended a treatment centre at Our Lady of Victory, Stroud, Gloucestershire which offers 'therapy in a spiritual context' before his conviction[14] Brendan Smyth (1927–1997) was a notorious child molester who used his position as a Catholic priest to obtain access to his victims.

Payne was convicted at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on 26 January 1998 of 14 sample charges of sexually abusing 8 boys aged between 11 and 14 years old between 1968 and 1987.

[18] In December 2010, "singing priest" Tony Walsh was sentenced to 123 years in prison for 14 child abuse convictions involving sex-related offences dating from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s.

On 15 October 2009 the High Court ruled that the commission's report could be published, except for Chapter 19, which contained material relating to three upcoming criminal cases.

[28] The commission's report said testimony had demonstrated beyond a doubt that the entire system treated children more like prison inmates and slaves than people with legal rights and human potential, that church officials encouraged ritual beatings and consistently shielded their orders' paedophiles from arrest amid a "culture of self-serving secrecy", and that government inspectors failed to stop the chronic beatings, rapes and humiliation.