Child abuse report - Rebuttal cannot be accepted
In it they said that they would not re-open the deal that sees them pay less than 10% of the compensation due following the appalling abuses revealed in last week’s Ryan report.
They are liable for less than 10% of the €1.3 billion bill foisted on this near-bankrupt country because clerics and lay people in their employ behaved like savages, albeit with the tacit approval of this society, and they won’t reconsider?
Who do these people think they are? Why do they imagine that they are not responsible for the crimes committed by the brutes and paedophiles set free by their organisations?
The statement is as baffling as it is enraging as yesterday two of the island’s most senior Catholic churchmen – primate Cardinal Seán Brady and Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin – both acknowledged that the deal must be revisited, that it was at least unfair if not immoral.
Though this shamed and bruised society is as unified as any society can be on this issue it seems that the Catholic church is divided between those who recognise reality and those caught in a pre-Vatican II time warp where protecting their own interests always comes first.
The outrage that greets the shameless rebuff intensifies when you realise that these organisations have not yet met their obligations under the get-out-of-jail, behind-closed-doors deal hammered out in the dying hours of Bertie Ahern’s 2002 Government.
Dr Martin described as “stunning” the fact that payments due under the Woods capitulation – seven years after it was signed off – have not been finalised.
Though they “fully accept that we seriously failed vulnerable people while in our care and that we have an ongoing responsibility to try to meet their needs”.
“Rather than re-opening the terms of the agreement ... we reiterate our commitment to working with those who suffered enormously while in our care. We must find the best and most appropriate ways of directly assisting them,” was how they described their position.
A week ago this huge bill was a side issue, a secondary concern because everyone, foolishly now it seems, thought that the great contrition expressed by these people actually meant something and that there was substance to the regret expressed so freely. How stupid we were to imagine that the horrifying scale of abuse and torture revealed would make any discussion about re-opening this deal redundant.
But by behaving with Romanov disdain the religious groups have issued a challenge to this society that must be met head-on if we are to be able to imagine that we live in a modern society where the primacy of civil law is unchallenged.
This scandal has done immense damage to this country’s reputation right around the world. And though it must be acknowledged that all of society is culpable in the affair, the 18 congregations who played the lead role in this horror story need to wake up to their responsibilities. The time for asking has passed.
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