McDowell under fire over role in Church deal
Mr McDowell was Attorney General in June 2002 when the deal was struck between the then Minister for Education Michael Woods and 12 religious congregations.
Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte yesterday demanded to know how actively involved Mr McDowell was in drawing up and finalising the deal.
Asserting that the then Attorney General was not involved in the finalisation of the deed, he said Mr McDowell, as chief legal adviser to the Government, was party to an extremely bad deal.
Mr McDowell yesterday refused to comment. He said his role was to give legal advice to the Cabinet and so it would be inappropriate for him to comment.
The deal attracted renewed controversy this week when it emerged the Department of Education has accepted ‘in principle’ only 20m of 80m of property included in the deal (the approximate 41m cash component has been paid in full).
The department has already rejected almost 60m of property because of problems associated with title or suitability, or whether transfer constitutes a benefit.
Minister for Education Noel Dempsey has said he will seek cash payments from the religious congregations if the property is unsuitable.
However, the department last night accepted there was no legal obligation on the congregations to make cash payments, raising the possibility that wrangling over property transfers could continue for years.
Fr Michael Drennan of the Congregation of Religious of Ireland said yesterday that the religious congregations would “honour their commitments in full”.
Among the questions that opposition parties say have yet to be answered are: Why the deed of indemnity was drafted by Arthur Cox, solicitors for the religious congregations, and not by the Attorney General’s office?
Why Michael Woods attended key negotiating meetings without Government law officers when the religious congregations were represented by senior counsel?
Why the deed of indemnity was not debated in the Dáil before being signed off by Mr Woods in his final day in office?
Why the Department of Finance view that liability be shared 50-50 between the Church and State was abandoned in favour of the indemnity deal?
Why Dr Woods agreed to include 40m of property that had already been transferred to the State?
Why the Attorney General Michael McDowell was not personally involved in the finalisation of the deed of the indemnity?
A spokeswoman for the department last night said Mr McDowell’s office was involved in the finalisation of the deed.
She confirmed there were two meetings involving Dr Woods at which no lawyers were present but said they “were conducted on the strict understanding that no details of the indemnity agreement could be agreed at those meetings”.
