An Irish judge has been urged to seize confidential church files on child abuse which have led to a dispute between two of Ireland's leading Catholic clerics.Victims of clerical sexual and physical abuse from Ireland's notorious industrial schools last night urged Mr Justice Ryan to demand access to 5,000 documents relating to sexual abuse by priests and, crucially, members of the religious orders.
The judge, who heads up the Ryan Commission, is close to publishing a report that has taken nine years to complete and that investigates child abuse at the industrial schools and orphanages run by religious orders.
Former inmates of the Christian Brothers-run institutions urged the judge to enter the legal row between Cardinal Desmond Connell and his successor as Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin.Archbishop Martin wants to give the files to a separate state inquiry into 147 priests who were abusing children in the Dublin diocese.
But Cardinal Connell won a temporary injunction in the Dublin High Court last week to prevent the files being made public, insisting that they were privileged and protected by solicitor-client confidentiality.
The case resumes today in the High Court.
The Irish Survivors of Child Abuse (Irish Soca) organisation said the Ryan Commission would now have to postpone its final report until it had examined the files. It is believed they include information about abuse at Artane, in north Dublin, over a 40-year period. These documents were never disclosed to the Ryan Commission, Irish Soca said.
In a letter this weekend to the judge heading up the inquiry that Taoiseach Bertie Ahern set up nine years ago, Irish Soca's Patrick Walsh, a former resident at Artane, said: 'Given that Cardinal Connell considers all these documents legally privileged and that these matters are now before the High Court, it seems to us that the Ryan Commission should seek to enjoin in next Monday's adjourned proceedings to reserve its position as a legally interested party in whatever documents are currently in dispute.
'There is of course legal provision within the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse Act (2000) allowing you to intervene in these circumstances. We now call upon you to act decisively and enjoin the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse to the proceedings in the High Court.'
No one from the Ryan Commission was available this weekend to comment, but it has the right to access all documents relating to clerical child abuse at institutions run by Catholic religious orders in the state.
Walsh said yesterday that the Ryan Commission was under legal obligation to the victims to view the files.
He also praised what he described as 'the new policy of church Glasnost being pursued by Archbishop Martin'.
A Vatican spokesman said Connell was in a Rome hospital and therefore not available for comment.
His second-in-command in Dublin, Auxiliary Bishop Dr Eamonn Walsh, has insisted there is no conflict between Connell and the Archbishop.
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