Ireland has a sex offenders register but we don't know where it is

IT has been impossible, these last few days, to watch the images broadcast from Soham without sharing the sense of desolation felt by the families involved.

And yet it is impossible to understand the awful depth of that desolation, the sense that lives have been wrecked beyond repair. The deaths of two little girls, and the manner of those deaths, is surely a tragedy almost beyond comprehension. And the pain of those who must carry on will frequently feel beyond endurance.

Often we associate tragedy with place names New York, Omagh, Enniskillen and Warrington are four names that will always come instantly to my mind. And without meaning to, we tend to rank tragedies in terms of the impact they have on us, usually generated by the size of the numbers involved.