Ireland's Catholic bishops are to hold an urgent special meeting to discuss child sex abuse. A time and venue have not yet been set, but are expected to be agreed before the weekend.
The bishops were not due to meet again until June 10th.
Meanwhile it has emerged that in 1998 the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, refused the request of an abuse victim for "a public inquiry into the Catholic Church's handling of allegations of sexual abuse of children by priests and other religious in Ireland".
Yesterday the Bishop of Killaloe, Dr Willie Walsh, said he would have no difficulty with such an inquiry.
The Taoiseach, writing to Mr Andrew Madden, who had been abused by Father Ivan Payne, a priest of the Dublin archdiocese who was jailed in 1998 for the crime, said "it would not be appropriate for the Government to establish a public inquiry into the way in which the Catholic Church handled allegations of sexual abuse".
Such an inquiry would be impractical and, besides, "the Catholic Church is not a public body", he said.
He also felt "there would be an intrinsic, and probably legally challengeable, unfairness which focused on the Catholic Church and abuse by clergy".
Mr Madden renewed his call for such an inquiry on RTÉ Radio's Liveline programme this week.
Speaking yesterday, Dr Walsh said he had no doubt that the bishops would co-operate fully with any State inquiry that might be established into how the church handled cases of child sexual abuse. He also felt that Bishop Comiskey's decision to resign "was overall the right one in the circumstances for him".
He continued: "At the moment, we as bishops have lost some credibility in examining ourselves, examining what we have done, so I think it may well be necessary to have an external examination of how we have handled the issue. It has to be credible."
He suggested that an independent inquiry could be headed by a retired member of the judiciary and be modelled on the independent review of child protection within the Catholic Church in England and Wales.
He was shattered after watching the BBC documentary Suing The Pope and felt that questions had to be answered arising from it.
He did not regret anything that had been revealed in recent days. If it was there, revealing it could only be good, for the church must be above all about truth.
There were "a lot of indications that we have failed as bishops to some degree in, above all, the protection of children. That has been the primary task in this issue."
"We have always made it our primary task, but I think it is clear that we have made mistakes in trying to achieve that" Dr Walsh said.
"I think that often happened by paying too much heed to legal advice and not paying too much heed to pastoral advice.
"Somehow, there is some sort of an instinct in us to always want to protect the church. If my own brother did something dreadful, my first instinct would be shield him. That is in all of us.
"At times we may have allowed that instinct to be too strong and in some way to fail the victims of sexual abuse. We have failed them."