A round-up of today's other stories in brief
Church in Ireland 'lacks credibility'
The Irish Catholic Church is suffering from a lack of credibility because of its leaders' failure to respond to clerical scandals and problems, a controversial American priest has told a conference in Maynooth, writes Olivia Kelly.
Fr Charles Curran, who was banned from teaching by Pope Benedict XVI after he questioned the church's ban on artificial contraception, was speaking at the Risks of Theology conference at St Patrick's College, Maynooth, last night.
The president of the college, Mgr Dermot Farrell, has said his approval was not sought before Fr Curran was invited to the conference.
Scandals had "racked" the church but the hierarchical leadership had been slow to act "and has not responded to the many problems facing the church", said Fr Curran.
There was a growing lack of credibility in the church and many Irish people were moving away from it.
"Truly the church in Ireland is experiencing its winter. The church itself has not dealt creatively with the problems it is facing internally and with the growing secularisation in Ireland," he said.
The failure of the institutional church to hear the needs of gays, lesbians and divorced people had disillusioned many Catholics. Women were the "most alienated" people in the church because they had been denied any true leadership roles, he said.
The conference was hosted by the faculty of theology in honour of Fr Enda McDonagh, who was professor of moral theology from 1958 to 1995.
Man fined €500 for video fraud
A Gorey man received a four-month suspended jail sentence and a fine of €500 from Judge Donnachadh Ó Buachalla after pleading guilty to supplying prohibited video recordings.
The court was told that Seán Redmond, Grattan Street, Gorey, was downloading videos from American and British websites and copying DVDs on his personal computer and selling them.
Gardaí found 80 DVDs, seven videos and 39 pornographic DVD covers at the man's home.