Cowen to demand orders pay half of abuse bill

TAOISEACH Brian Cowen will go into talks with the religious orders this week demanding that they pay half the cost of compensating and supporting abuse survivors.

The demand will be made after discussions with survivors who will warn him there are thousands of as yet unacknowledged victims who are entitled to help.

Mr Cowen will meet on Thursday with the 18 religious orders involved in the 2002 indemnity deal that capped their contribution to assisting survivors at just 10% of the €1.3 billion cost, and has signalled that he will dictate rather than negotiate terms for a top-up deal.

But the strongest indications of where the Government stands came last night when chief whip Pat Carey told RTÉ: “What we are now proposing to do as a Government and hopefully with the agreement of all the other parties is to go back, I think, to as near as we can to the 50-50 approach that was originally envisaged.”

That suggests the talks will be tricky as some orders have stressed they have existing commitments to schools and other institutions and said estimates of their wealth were exaggerated.

Presentation nun, Sr Elizabeth Maxwell, who helped negotiate the 2002 deal, dismissed reports that the orders had property worth €15bn to €20bn.

“€15 to €20bn might be the value on paper but most of those buildings are in the service of people so they are not going to be realised as assets,” she said.

Br Edmund Garvey of the Christian Brothers also appeared to play down the amount the orders could contribute.

“I would suggest respectfully that the figure that they [survivors] are looking at is a half of the total cost of the redress scheme. We’re not looking at that figure. We’re looking at now the new case we’re in following the Ryan report.”

Pressure to make the orders meet the state halfway will mount on Wednesday when Mr Cowen meets with survivors’ groups who will demand the disbanding of the Residential Institutions Redress Board, a review of all claims determined by the payments body to date with a view to increasing the sums, and a new mechanism to handle outstanding claims.

They will also ask that a fresh appeal go out for victims who never previously came forward – a move that may add thousands of people and millions of euro to the equation. Some estimates put the number of people entitled to claim but who never came forward at 4,000 to 5,000.

Christine Buckley, director of the Aislinn survivors group, said: “There are people in prisons, people in psychiatric hospitals, people who are homeless. And don’t forget that many of our people ran out of the country as soon as they could and are abroad.”

Solicitor James MacGuill, who has represented survivors going before the board, also said he believed the numbers seeking help could rise.