A number of religious orders have begun searching their archives for evidence of child abuse, a group representing surviving victims of abuse at the hands of Catholic clerics has been told.

Jon McCourt, of the Northern Ireland Survivors and Victims of Institutional Abuse (Savia), told the Today programme's John Humphrys that it was an "emotional and "challenging" meeting with Catholic primate Cardinal Sean Brady.

He said that it gave the people who ran those orders and institutions the opportunity to look across the table and see the legacy of the abuse that happened of the children who had been abused under there care.

"Victims needed to have answers from the church," he said, and that they now have to trust the church that they will deliver on their promise of "unequivocal co-operation".

Mr McCourt added that he was "unscarred but certainly not unscathed" from his own experiences of abuse.

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