DUBLIN, IRELAND - Ireland's Catholic bishops apologised Wednesday and asked for forgiveness after an official report discovered decades of child sex abuse by priests and a cover-up by top churchmen.

The bishops, meeting for their winter conference, said the 'scale and depravity of abuse' revealed in last month's report was shocking, and conceded that the culture of cover-up appeared widespread within the church.

The Irish Bishops' Conference, meeting over two days in the university town of Maynooth, said they had agreed to open talks with Ireland's child welfare inspectors to audit church protection policy.

'We are deeply shocked by the scale and depravity of abuse as described in the report,' the bishops said in a statement.

'We are shamed by the extent to which child sexual abuse was covered up in the Archdiocese of Dublin and recognise that this indicates a culture that was widespread in the Church.

'The avoidance of scandal, the preservation of the reputations of individuals and of the Church, took precedence over the safety and welfare of children.

'This should never have happened and must never be allowed to happen again. We humbly ask for forgiveness.'

A damning report by judge Yvonne Murphy last month concluded Dublin archbishops concealed clerical abuse and failed to inform police of their crimes over a period of more than three decades.

One priest admitted to sexually abusing over 100 children, while another confessed that he had abused on a fortnightly basis over 25 years.

There is growing pressure for the resignation of bishops and senior church officials who were the subject of adverse findings in Murphy's report.

Ireland's top two Catholic churchmen, primate of all-Ireland Cardinal Sean Brady and Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, plan to brief the pope on the report in Rome on Friday.

The Vatican's envoy to Dublin said sorry on Tuesday for 'any mistake from our side,' after a meeting with Ireland's foreign minister, who had expressed deep disappointment at the Vatican's silence over the affair.