SENIOR GOVERNMENT figures have said there is no legal basis to renegotiate the 2002 agreement with religious orders that capped their liability for institutional child abuse at €127 million.
Taoiseach Brian Cowen said the Government would take legal advice on the deal, but he insisted that the Coalition would not be in a position to force orders into making additional contributions.
“I think it’s important to emphasise that the State had a contingent liability in any event, and the Public Accounts Committee looked at this in great detail some years ago,” said the Taoiseach while campaigning in Co Meath.
The 2002 agreement indemnified religious congregations from all redress claims made by victims of abuse in exchange for payments and property transfers totalling €127 million.
The total bill for the redress scheme is likely to be about €1.3 billion. The deal was reached between religious orders and former minister for education Michael Woods on the day before he stepped down from office.
Asked if he now considered the agreement to have been a bad deal, Mr Cowen replied: “It was the offer that was made at the time as a result of discussions which took place. I emphasise that the need for the State to face up to its responsibilities was there in any event,” he said.
“Obviously the contribution from the orders and church authorities was something that was discussed at the time and it emerged that this was the amount that was being offered. There were legal issues there in terms of trying to ensure the maximum amount.”
Mr Cowen confirmed that there would be a special meeting of the Cabinet on Tuesday to consider the Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, and that would be followed by a two-day Dáil debate.
Minister for Education Batt O’Keeffe also said there was no legal way in which the church could be coerced into going back to renegotiate the deal. But he added that it was open to the church to make further compensation available if it so desired.
The same point was made by Green Party leader and Minister for the Environment John Gormley. He said that while there may not be a legal obligation on the church authorities, there certainly was a moral obligation to do more for those who had been abused. Minister of State for Children Barry Andrews said that the funds originally promised by the religious orders, as part of the agreement, had been forthcoming. And of the 63 properties that had been agreed would be handed over to the State, all but two were now being used for State purposes.
The Conference of Religious in Ireland (Cori), said in a statement that as far as it was aware none of the 18 orders concerned planned to revisit the terms of the 2002 agreement, which they say was made in good faith. “Some have questioned whether the religious have honoured their commitment to the agreement. We can confirm that the vast majority of these transactions have been completed. However, some legal work remains outstanding on some of the property transfers,” the statement noted.
Former Labour leader Pat Rabbitte, who strongly opposed the deal in 2002, said he had tried to raise the alarm about the “supine surrender” by Bertie Ahern’s government to the religious orders. But the full details revealed in the report by the commission, chaired by Mr Justice Seán Ryan, had vindicated his concerns.
“While the original recommendation of the Department of Finance was that the liability for financial compensation for the damage done to these children should be shared 50-50 between the State and the religious congregations . . . the deal agreed by Dr Michael Woods capped the congregations’ liability to €127 million – which we know now represents only around 10 per cent of the actual cost,” he said.
Mr Rabbitte added that there was now an unanswerable case for re-opening the indemnity agreement and a mechanism would have to be found to have it recast, to better reflect the appropriate share of liability between Church and State.
“We also need an independent investigation into all of the circumstances of the deal agreed by Dr Woods on behalf of the government in 2002,” he said.