 Father Michael Mernagh, the 70-year-old Augustinian priest who recently made a 272 km pilgrimage from Cobh to Dublin in atonement for the church's response to clerical child sex abuse said he was appalled at the extent and longevity of the abuse, "particularly at the role of the state and the government that seem to have colluded in actually encouraging children to be brought into these institutions to keep up the numbers.