OPPOSITION politicians have called for the establishment of specialist garda child protection units across the country in the wake of the Murphy Report into the Ferns scandal.

THE Gardaí responded in a “wholly unsatisfactory” manner to one of the most infamous clerical child abuse cases in the Diocese of Ferns, the Inquiry report has stated.

THE diocesan response to allegations of child abuse in Ferns, although varied over a span of 40 years, comes in for severe and damning criticism as successive bishops failed to protect vulnerable children from priests they knew to be abusers.