 He strongly promoted the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland in 1983, granted the equal right to life to mother and unborn.He was named in the Murphy Report on sexual abuse of children in Dublin; his actions in respect of complaints against priest Fr.McNamee were described in the report as "an example of how, throughout the 1970s, the church authorities were more concerned with the scandal that would be created by revealing Fr McNamee’s abuse rather than any concern for the abused".