Valintan Stan was pictured smiling as he left the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on Friday. He had been due for sentence on the charge of having unlawful carnal knowledge of the 14-year-old girl.

His smile, as he was released by the DPP on the charge, is being shared by many other alleged rapists around the country. The Taoiseach said earlier this week that the judgement did not offer "blanket cover" to all serving sentences in prisons around the country for statutory rape. But he was wrong. A 41-year-old man, who has served two years of a three-year jail term for statutory rape of an underage girl is to ask the High Court to release him tomorrow. And at least seven other cases, brought under legislation struck out by the Supreme Court, are currently before the courts and likely to be scrapped.

It means that convicted paedophiles . . . like the man whose case comes before the High Court tomorrow . . . can challenge their continued detention. In this case the man was 38 when he had unlawful carnal knowledge of a 12-year-old girl. If he succeeds in his bid for freedom his name will not appear on the sex offenders' register.

There are just reasons for the Supreme Court decision. Before the challenge to Ireland's underage sex laws was upheld, any man who had sex with a girl under the age of 15 was guilty of statutory rape . . . regardless of any defence including that she had lied about her age. It was a bad law.

The Taoiseach recognised this point when he said the 1935 law was "for a very different society and a very different age." What Ahern did not address was the fact that the the Law Reform Commission recommended that this legislation be reformed back in 1990.

The cases currently before the courts that may be quashed all involve children born since that recommendation 16 years ago.

Ahern's party has been in government for 13 of those 16 years.

The loophole that now exists in the law sends out a very bad message to those who prey sexually on the young and vulnerable.

The Rape Crisis Network is right when it says that the week's events signal to sex offenders that the law can be manipulated.

Minister McDowell, again in the eye of a storm, denies that the decision is an "open day for perverts" but is taking the matter very seriously. He intends to present a general outline of new law reform to the cabinet on Tuesday.

Until that happens it is, in the words of Rape Crisis Centre chief executive Ellen O'Malley-Dunlop, "a very dangerous time for some of the most vulnerable members of our society, in particular young girls under the age of 15 years."