More than three quarters of Irish adults firmly believe that the disgraced Cardinal Sean Brady should resign because of his bad handling of the clerical sex abuse scandals within the Irish church.

According to a poll conducted by the Irish Times newspaper, 76% of respondents felt the Cardinal should resign, 15% felt he should stay in office while 9% had no opinion.

The poll revealed that support for Cardinal Brady was strongest in Ulster and Connacht were support for Brady stood at 33%, support for Brady in Leinster and Connacht dropped to less than 25%.

The poll found that respondents in the skilled working class category were the most hostile towards Brady with 84% of them calling for his resignation.

The largest social group to support Brady were farmers with 26% of them saying the church responded well to the Murphy report. 

The poll found that people aged 25 to 34 years strongly believed Brady should resign while over 65's were the strongest supporters of Brady.

Fianna Fail supporters were found to be the most supportive of Brady while Sin Fein supporters were the most hostile.

Participants were also asked question about the Murphy report which detailed clerical sex abuse in the Dublin diocese.

Only 11% of respondents felt the Catholic Church responded appropriately to the report while, 83% said they were unhappy with the churches handling of the report and 6% had no opinion.

The poll was taken Tuesday and Wednesday of last week with a sample of a 1,000 voters aged 18 and over in face to face interviews at 100 sampling points around the country.