Ahern defends abuse victims compensation

Bertie Ahern today accused religious orders of wanting to drag every allegation of institutional abuse through the courts.

The Taoiseach said the compensation scheme agreed by the Government was the only alternative to people having to relive their trauma in court.

He rejected a suggestion in the Dail that the deal was “recklessly negligent”.

“The Government made a decision that we should find a way of fast-tracking these cases, not to drag – as CORI and the religious orders wanted to do – each individual case into going back to the trauma of decades in the courts,” Mr Ahern said.

The Taoiseach defended the government scheme, which was set up to compensate victims of abuse in residential institutions run by religious orders.

He was responding to comments in the Dail by opposition Labour leader Pat Rabbitte, who called it a “recklessly negligent deal”.

Mr Rabbitte said that victims deserved compensation, but criticised the €128m contribution by the congregations.

He described it as a “disgraceful deal to the taxpayer”.

“Isn’t it the case that what happened here was that for the disgracefully abused victims who deserve compensation that you did a recklessly negligent deal, for the same reason that you were recklessly negligent with the public finances because you wanted to win votes coming into a general election?” he asked.

Last January the former minister for education, Dr Michael Woods, said that the Residential Institutions Redress Scheme would cost up to €500m, based on an estimate that around 3,000 people would make successful claims.

Today Mr Rabbitte said it was now likely the number of claims would reach 5,000, and that the cost of this may exceed €1bn.

He criticised the government for capping the €128m contribution by religious institutions and for leaving the taxpayer responsible for the extra cost.

Mr Ahern replied that there would probably be around 3,000 to 5,000 cases, and said he did not believe this would go “anywhere near” the billion euro mark.

He said he believed the cost would be closer to the original estimate.

The Taoiseach once again denied suggestions any secret deal was done with the church, dismissing claims by Mr Rabbitte that the attorney general was not consulted in the establishment of the scheme.

“All of the information of this had been in the public domain,” he said.

John Kelly, spokesman for Irish Survivors of Child Abuse, criticised the deal, saying it had been done behind closed doors.

He said: “We got the deal, it took a long, long time, but we believe that this deal stinks, and that the minister did not inform the attorney general all the way through.”