An "immediate criminal investigation" into how allegations of sexual abuse were handled by the Archdiocese of Dublin must be initiated, one of the main organisations representing victims of abuse has said.
Mr Colm O'Gorman, director of One in Four, said all archdiocesan files relating to the alleged offences should be immediately seized by gardaí.
"Any idea that the Church [would] engage in the whole issue of how they've handled these cases with any level of integrity is now blasted to pieces," he said.
Mr John Kelly, spokesperson for the organisation Survivors of Child Abuse (SOCA), which has over 400 members in the Dublin Archdiocese, also called for an immediate criminal inquiry, particularly into the alleged role of Cardinal Connell in suppressing evidence on allegations of child sex abuse.
"Like anyone accused of obstructing justice I think he should be lifted by the gardaí and taken down to Harcourt Square and questioned.
"At best the only defence he has is ineptitude, insensitivity and incompetence. At worst he has been criminal in his behaviour."
He said the Cardinal's position was "untenable" and called on him to "resign forthwith".
Mr O'Gorman, however, called on the Cardinal to resist such demands.
"I think resignation doesn't take anybody anywhere. Instead I'd like him come forward and finally acknowledge the thing that we all at this stage know. And that is that the church pursued a dedicated line of action which was to suppress and to keep quiet allegations and evidence of sexual assault."
Once the Cardinal has done that, he added, "it's a matter for him what he chooses to do".
To resign now, however, "would be an abdication of responsibility", he said.
Mr Kelly called for a statutory inquiry into all alleged church abuse, at which witnesses and alleged abusers would be compelled to give evidence and to which all documents would be handed over.
He said the Child Protection Committee, chaired by Ms Justice Gillian Hussey, was "dead in the water".
"It has no statutory power. What is it about except to counter any allegations against the church?"
He said the church must "finally be legally compelled to tell everything it knows about child sex abuse by its clergy.
"What came out in Prime Time is no shock to us. We have always known of the systematic cover-up and collusion at the highest level in the Catholic Church."
A woman who called herself "Marie", the mother of two of Father Noel Reynolds's victims, spoke on RTÉ's Liveline programme yesterday. She said her now adult children lived with a fear "that has remained with them and is remaining with them". She told how Father Reynolds admitted to her, in the presence of another priest, that he had abused her children and others.
Father Reynolds died earlier this year. She said: "He has had such an effect on our lives, he is not dead. He is still torturing us. My two have been destroyed."
She said she hoped other victims would come forward. "That would be my greatest hope today." She urged them "not to have the fear" of any consequence of reporting the abuse.
She said Cardinal Connell should not resign. "He should be made to stay and face whatever is to come," she said.
A victim of abuse by another priest in Dublin Archdiocese also spoke on the programme. Calling himself "John", he said he was abused when he was aged 10 to 11. He never reported the abuse, or told any of his family. He said he had a picture in his head of being abused by the priest, "that will be with me till the day I die".
He sensed "no sorrow, no regret" from the spokespeople for the Cardinal. "I just wish the whole bloody thing would go away, that it would get off the telly, out of the papers, and I could go back to leading what I call a normal life."
A spokesman for the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, said the Minister would view the Prime Time programme and "reflect on its implications".
The issue was "obviously a matter of great concern" to the Minister. He would discuss the implications with his Cabinet colleagues, added the spokesman, before deciding whether his Department should direct that a criminal investigation be initiated.
