Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald has said that a new report into the deaths of children in care is "harrowing".
Minister Fitzgerald said the report will be published by her department in "a number of weeks".
She was speaking a day after the publication of the Vatican's report into child abuse and in advance of the children in care report.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Ms Fitzgerald said that both church and State had failed children in Ireland.
She said lessons had to be learned and there had to be a new era of child protection in Ireland.
