Christian Brothers Investment Services (CBIS), a New York-based investment company founded by the De La Salle Brothers in 1981, has recently established a company called CBIS Global Funds which is described as an "off-shore fund based in Dublin". The company wants to attract what it calls "ethical investments" from Catholic institutions in Europe and beyond.

Does everybody feel sick? Or is nausea reserved only for those who did not have their moral outlook warped by the kind of "good Catholic education" offered by these people and their ilk? It's the kind of warped schooling that still has thousands of people in this country prepared, apparently, to trust their own children to schools owned and controlled by these greedy, blood-sucking, cruel, dishonest, unprincipled, immoral men and women who have creamed off millions of taxpayers' money on the backs of abused child slaves. And just what do the holy brothers plan to do with these funds and the rest of their ill-gotten gains? On recently revealed experience we can be sure the main aim will be to ensure that the State authorities can't get their hands on them. What a wonderful example of a moral code with which to imbue the coming generations. And we know how well they passed it on during past generations: they have produced serried ranks of thousands of Irish citizens who have equally warped moral codes when it comes to doing down their fellow citizens through greed and chicanery, and who persist in defending these people as offering a good moral and ethical grounding for life.

Solidarity with their tormented victims is easy when it doesn't require action. Words and walking are cheap, as we saw on Wednesday. The words that would have required a sea-change in Irish thought weren't uttered: "Get into the High Court. Now. Freeze their assets. Put in train the mechanism for taking them collectively and individually into the criminal court to answer for their sins -- financial, violent, and sexual. Draft legislation to sequester all their funds on behalf of the State."

The victims wept outside the Dail. Inside, the products of the Christian education offered by the brothers, priests, and nuns, sat smugly and talked of "consultation" with the abusers to PERSUADE them to "increase their offer of compensation", and expressed more "sorrow". The Brothers guided their moral outlook very well when they had them in the classrooms as children: blunted and skewed, it was letting the men and women in black off the hooks they deserved to hang from.

Outside the chamber, many of our brave public representatives were muttering the oft-heard mantra "Do you expect us to bankrupt the religious, who have done so much for this country?" Why not? They are morally bankrupt, so why not bankrupt them financially if that can offer some surcease from anguish for their victims, and some recompense to the taxpayers who now have been forced to realise that they have been funding religious greed for generations? Co-incidentally, on the same day, the Catholic Bishops of Ireland issued another statement after their ritual meeting of pomp and circumstance, saying how "ashamed, humble, and repentant" they felt. Their hypocritical arrogance remains breathtaking as they uttered words that should have choked them. The statement was drafted as it was being revealed that even up to a few months ago they were raging with all the force and authority at their command to deny their crimes, and even more importantly, to avoid being held financially to account for them.

The only ray of hope was the embarrassed, beaten floundering of that good man Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin, as he tried to find some lame excuse for the vile behaviour of his fellows. He alone is not lost to all sense of shame. But his decency serves only to cast into pitiless relief the outrageous inhumanity of his fellows and their unrepentant refusal to accept the enormity of their crimes.

Ireland must not forget that these men and their female cohorts have lied, lied, and lied. They will not yield an inch or a cent until they are forced to with all the uncompromising power of the State. That must happen without delay.

- Emer O'Kelly