It was a colossal impertinence for the Catholic Church to seek the right to dismiss employees for being in conflict with its ethos when authorities in that same institution had consistently protected child abusers, said Mr David Norris (Ind).
He and other Independents would seek to amend the Employment Equality Bill, he added. They could not accept the provision exempting religious bodies from the Bill's equal treatment requirements. This proposed provision gave exemption to some of the most significant employers, especially the churches, hospitals and religious institutions.
Mr Norris was particularly disappointed that there was no attempt to define religious ethos. "How are we to know what is being offended against?"
Referring to the Catholic Church, he said its practice over many years had been to protect child abusers. Was that the ethos of that church?
"I am not speaking of single instances. I am speaking of every single day on the radio, on the television and in the newspapers there were cases of multiple child abuse, where the church has officially, consistently operated to protect those, to retain them in employment, to move them around, not to provide information to the parents, and not to address the situation.
"That is the ethos in practice of the church. And yet, simultaneously, they are claiming, on the other hand, the right to dismiss from employment people whose beliefs, whose ideas or whose style of personal behaviour offends against their ethos. This is an absolutely Swiftian nonsense."
Under this legislation, Eileen Flynn could still be dismissed. She had been let go because she was giving succour to the children of a previously married man with whom she was living. She was a good mother but her job was taken away because she came into conflict with the church.
"At that very time, the church was supporting, succouring, harbouring and nourishing people who were violently attacking children. This woman was nourishing them in a good home."
Under this legislation, that state of affairs could continue. "That is not tolerable to me. I do not accept it. I will be putting down an amendment."
Mr Norris said he believed the Bill was unconstitutional because it would not protect the constitutional guarantee of freedom of conscience and the free profession and practice of religion, subject to public order and morality.
Surveys indicated that attitudes to public morality had changed radically over the last 10 years. "It is a colossal impertinence for an institution whose own members have behaved, on occasions, so badly to seek to take to itself a block responsibility to discriminate.
"I would like to qualify that. I do not wish this to be taken as a wholesale attack on the Catholic Church or its teachers or its priests. I know the wonderful work that a very large number of them have done."
It was tragic that priests, nuns and brothers should be tarred with the same brush. Sexual abuse was awful in itself, but the phenomenon of concealment by religious authorities seeking to protect the church's power was so widespread that this made the situation dangerous, added Mr Norris.