A correction

■ I refer to the article ‘Church’s big hitter goes into battle’ (‘Agenda’ section, Irish Independent, February 3).

I appreciate journalistic licence often involves the use of colour to enhance the content for the reader, but to describe me as a “big hitter”, and the issue of the right to life of the unborn as a “battle”, contributes to a coarsening of the language in the current public discourse.

I am respectfully asking that the record be corrected by your paper.

The article alleges that I “delayed cancer drug trials at the Mater hospital” and that I was “one of a three-person sub-committee at the hospital that halted clinical trials for the chemotherapy drug, Tarceva”. These statements are false.

I was never a member of the ethics committee at the Mater Hospital, nor was I a member of any subcommittee of the ethics committee. I had no part whatsoever in making that decision.

My concern is not just with the fact that the Irish Independent has published an incorrect report, which casts me in a negative light, but that this erroneous material has also been previously published by Independent News and Media.

In the interest of truth and accuracy, I am therefore asking for the record to be publicly corrected. Bishop Kevin Doran Bishop of Elphin