Exposed: Ireland's vile child-sex rings

 Special investigation: In the week when Justice Minister John O'Donoghue launched a major report detailing the dissemination of child pornography on the Internet, The Irish Independent has uncovered disturbing new evidence of organised paedophilia in this country. A special investigation by Gemma O'Doherty and Jerome Reilly finds the stereotype of the `dirty old man' has been replaced by wealthy businessmen prepared to take major risks in satisfying their perversion

Shocking new evidence of highly-organised paedophile networks operating along the east coast and preying on children as young as 11 years old has been uncovered by an Irish Independent investigation.

As well as a number of loosely-structured paedophile rings centred on Dublin, there is compelling information from a number of childcare professionals that a sinister group of sexual predators are exploiting a number of children in the Louth region.

But it has emerged that the Louth connection is just one element of a coherent and systematic abuse of possibly hundreds of children, involving the distribution of child pornography and the exchange of information about potential targets. Strong evidence was contained in the recent Murphy Swimming Report indicating that a ring of contacts may have been operating in the sport which has seen two of its national coaches charged with sexual assaults and rapes and another leading figure convicted of double murder, his motive believed to have been his desperation to keep secret his sexual exploits with an underage swimmer.

In the west of Ireland, too, there is compelling evidence of a paedophile network in operation. As exclusively revealed by The Irish Independent, gardai in Galway are amassing an extensive dossier to go to the DPP on sinister activities in the Salthill suburb of the city.

The internet is just one of the tools used by members of the rings to keep in contact and satisfy their lust for ``new material.''

In Dublin senior officers from the Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence unit based at Harcourt Square are still conducting a major investigation into an organised child sex ring involving girls as young as 12.

One alleged ringleader is presently before the courts, but gardai have now widened their investigations in their efforts to crack a significant paedophile network for the first time. Further arrests are expected. Some vulnerable children, many of them homeless or in care, have been drawn into `survival sex' selling their bodies for money.

Along the east coast a core group of about 30 serial paedophiles have been identified so far, many of them professional, middle-aged married men. Businessmen, managing directors and wealthy property-owners who are willing to travel long distances to indulge their sick perversion are major figures in the network.

Evidence began to emerge in Dundalk two years ago when suspicious activities at a phone box in the centre of the town came to the attention of youth workers. As darkness fell each evening the youngsters, of both sexes emerged from the side streets and outlying housing estates around Dundalk.