Church Owes €50m To Abused Victims

The Catholic Church owes the Government more than €50 million of the compensation promised to victims of clerical sex abuse.

The overall compensation package will cost €1.1 billion, but a deal with the religious orders struck with the state limits their liability to €128m. The rest of this figure was agreed to be paid by the Irish taxpayer.

The Catholic Church was permitted in the deal to pay just a tenth of the total compensation, and has as yet only paid just over half of what is owed to the victims.

It was agreed that €128m would be paid by the Church of the original €254m compensation cost envisaged by the Government. The Church agreed to pay this sum through property, cash and counselling. But in an extremely controversial aspect of the deal the religious orders were given indemnity from abuse claims from former residents of 18 institutions ran by the church.

Brigid McManus of the Department of Education told the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee (PAC) the total received from religious institutions to date is €76.8m. She said of the €66m agreed to be handed over in property deeds, just a third of this, or €19.5m, has been received.

Ms McManus told the Oireachtas committee, which monitors government spending, there are "19 problematic cases" of property transfers which were agreed to in the 2002 deal.

Labour’s Roisín Shortall yesterday told the PAC meeting: "It seems extraordinary at this stage that such a large outstanding figure is still to be paid to the state."

She said it is a matter of concern for the taxpayer that the deal cost four times what the Government estimated.

The wealth of the Catholic Church remains undisclosed by the Vatican, but it is estimated by some to exceed a trillion euro.

(DW/JM)