Caranua paid €100k to Church-funded counselling service for clerical abuse survivors

Caranua paid almost €100,000 to a Catholic Church-funded counselling service to provide support to abuse survivors over the last two years.

The revelation is contained in documents sent by Caranua to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), following its appearance before the committee last month. Caranua was established by the Residential Institutions Statutory Fund Act 2012 to oversee the use of cash contributions of up to €110m, pledged by the religious congregations, to support the needs of survivors of institutional child abuse.

In the documents, Caranua outline details of €94,648 it paid to the Towards Healing counselling service in respect of 59 individuals in 2015 and 2016. The bulk of this, €87,263, was paid in 2015, with the remainder paid the following year.