The head of the Catholic Church in Ireland has apologised to child abuse victims who are demanding an inquiry into the way they were treated in institutions across Northern Ireland over the last 70 years.
So far 6,000 people have signed a petition which was handed in at Stormont on Monday.
They want a major investigation similar to the Ryan Report that catalogued abuse by Catholic clergy in the Republic.
Cardinal Sean Brady said he was sorry for distress caused.
"I want to first of all apologise to those who have survived abuse, which they suffered as children in Catholic run institutions," he said.
"The matter of an inquiry is a matter for the government - but if the government decides to hold such an inquiry, the Catholic Church will co-operate with it."
Belfast woman Margaret McGuckin claims she was abused as a child growing up in Nazareth House on the Ormeau Road.
'Living in fear'
"There was a lot of bullying, you were living in fear of the nuns - they were very, very strict," she said.
"Lots of times I was locked in cupboards and that's the way they dealt with you - that was their punishment meted out to you.
"You were beaten by sticks and canes and mainly where people wouldn't see the marks, underneath your dress."
Marie-Therese Rogers-Maloney was left as a baby with the nuns in Nazareth House on the Ormeau Road.
"We often watched others being physically beaten and that's not nice, that's mentally not nice because that stays in your memory," she said.
"The work ... We really were child slaves and that's putting it mildly. Physical work - scrubbing, waxing, cleaning, polishing ... During the summer time, we used to go to the laundry and we had to wash our sheets in cold water - it was a ritual every morning, simply because you wet the bed."
A motion brought before the Assembly calling for a full investigation was led by the SDLP's Carmel Hanna.
She said: "Irish people for decades to come will ask how appalling horrors were inflicted on innocent children placed in the care of religious orders by the state. It is a terrifying account of the shattered lives of generations of Irish children."
Earlier this year, the Ryan report into child abuse at institutions run by Catholic religious orders in the Republic found that sexual, physical and emotional abuse was endemic.
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