The Minister for Justice has said she would be asking the Attorney General to advise on the next steps after a Circuit Court judge was convicted of the sexual assault of six young men.
Gerard O'Brien, 59, from Thurles in Co Tipperary, was found guilty on Friday of six counts of the sexual assault of young men in the 1990s at a time when he was a teacher in a secondary school in Dublin.
O'Brien is a former secondary school teacher, a former Fianna Fáil councillor, a former State solicitor for north Tipperary and is currently a Circuit Court judge.
In a statement, Minister Helen McEntee said she would be "considering the options open to the Government and the Oireachtas" following the guilty verdict.
She said she would be asking Attorney General Rossa Fanning to advise on the next steps.
"My thoughts are with the victim. These are appalling cases of sexual assault, I thank them for coming forward," she said.
"I have been clear that we have a lot of work to do to achieve my aim of zero-tolerance in our society for all forms of domestic, sexual and gender-based violence.
"Part of that is clearly demonstrating that nobody, no matter what position they hold in our society, is above the law or immune from prosecution for such crimes. Today is clear proof of that."
O'Brien had pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court to one count of attempted rape and eight counts of sexual assault in relation to six complainants on dates between March 1991 and November 1997.
He was in his 30s at the time, while the six complainants were aged between 17 and 24.
Five of the complainants said they woke up to find him sexually assaulting them, while another said the assault took place in a pub toilet.
O'Brien had initially denied any sexual contact with any of the complainants, but he later told gardaí there had been consensual sexual activity with three of the six.
He denied any wrongdoing.
O’Brien was born with no arms and only one leg as a result of the drug thalidomide.
The ten members of the jury took just over seven-and-a-half hours to reach guilty verdicts on all nine counts.
O’Brien will be sentenced on 4 March.
