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	Taoiseach Stays Silent in Wake of Scandal By Michael Brennan, Aine Kerr and Aidan O'connor Irish Independent November 28, 2009 http://www.independent.ie/national-news/taoiseach-stays-silent-in-wake-of-scandal-1957082.html TAOISEACH Brian Cowen yesterday avoided commenting publicly on the devastating findings of the probe into child abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese. Mr Cowen did not comment publicly on the Commission of Investigation report during his early morning tour of the flooded estates of Athlone on Thursday because it was not published until the afternoon. But he declined to speak to the waiting media while both entering and exiting Intel's factory in Kildare yesterday to attend its 20th anniversary celebrations. This left Children's Minister Barry Andrews to give the Government's position on the report instead. Mr Cowen is not likely to be questioned about the report until Leaders' Questions in the Dail next Tuesday -- five days after its publication. His silence came as Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny called on bishops named and shamed in the report to resign, and Green Party leader John Gormley claimed aspects of the report were "repulsive". Labour's justice spokesman Pat Rabbitte called for the Government to remove every bishop implicated in the report as the patron of schools in their dioceses. The lack of a response from Mr Cowen is also in marked contrast to his predecessor Bertie Ahern, who commented on the day of the publication of the Ferns Inquiry report in October 2005. Mr Ahern said he was "appalled and overwhelmed at the nature and extent of the abuse" by priests in the Ferns diocese and promised that the Government would move quickly to implement the recommendations of the report. Resignation Yesterday, Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny demanded the resignation of any bishop who was named in the report as part of the cover-up of child sex abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese. "In my view, from the point of view of personal leadership, of church integrity . . . people who were in positions and are still in positions should not continue in those positions," he said. Mr Kenny described the accounts of sex abuse as another "appalling litany of shame" in Irish society. Apologies were not good enough, he added. And Labour TD Joe Costello said the findings were shocking and called on the Government to extend the inquiry to all dioceses. "It is inevitable from the profile of abuse and abuser that every diocese in the country is potentially tainted," he added.
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