A Catholic priest who took steps to inform police about the paedophile priest Denis McAlinden in 1999 has admitted he could have gone to police several years earlier even though the two victims he knew about did not want the police involved, a state government inquiry has heard.

Father William Burston agreed he had known in 1996 that McAlinden had been stripped of his priestly faculties due to concerns he had sexually abused children. A letter he had written to McAlinden that year seeking his co-operation with the diocese's attempt to ''laicise'' or defrock him has been tendered in evidence. But it was not until 1999 that Father Burston wrote to the church's professional standards office, which handled sexual abuse complaints, suggesting ''intelligence could be given to the police'' about McAlinden, the inquiry into alleged church and police cover-ups of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests in the Hunter Valley has heard.

Paedophile: Denis McAlinden.

Father Burston had earlier given evidence that the reason no report was made to the police was that the victims did not want it.

As vicar general of the Maitland-Newcastle diocese between 1996 and 2001, Father Burston agreed with barrister Maria Gerace cross-examining that he would have been ''alive'' from 1997 onwards to the question of whether or not information that came to him concerning priests sexually abusing children should be reported to the police, due to the report of the royal commission into paedophilia that year.