I think Enda Kenny's proposal is more significant for the fact that a Taoiseach is prepared to make it than for any effect it is likely to have with regard to convictions.

It's my own view that any Irish man who trained and was ordained as a priest would almost certainly have come into possession of information regarding abuse by other priests at some point during their careers even if they were not engaged in abuse themselves. This could be in the confessional, through observation in schools or parishes or simply through their own suspicions. The church, even in Ireland, is a fairly small world and at some point secrets would have gotten out, if only to other priests. If those priests had such information and did nothing about it then they were accessories after the fact.

However, even if they did go to the authorities, the police, politicians and councillors and social services were themselves so subservient to the church that nothing would have been done. What this means is that without wanting to let the church off the hook for a moment, there also needs to be considered the complicity of the Irish state and those elements of Irish society (media, politicians, professional people) who allowed this to continue.

The power of the church was not and is not upheld only by priests. 'Laypeople' who ran institutions in accordance with the interests and teaching of the church are equally to blame.

On a much less serious level, I'm reminded of my Jesuit grammar school in South London which I started going to in 1968. Although the head teacher was a priest and there were always a few about, most of the teaching was done by 'laymen' (and later a few women) who were if anything even more demonstrably 'Catholic' than most of the priests and who were even more defensive of the ideology and interests of the church.

I think the word is 'Hegemony', and it is that hegemony that the church seems to be losing in Ireland. It still holds that hegemony to a much greater extent among the Irish diaspora, however, and I can't help wondering whether we are going to hear in the near future of similar instances of abuse within those institutions that have grown up concurrently with the Irish state and which themselves have traditionally had close ties to the church as well as the state. I suppose the difference is that with regard to cultural and sporting organisations it is easier for children and families to walk away.