Coalition deal with Church a fiasco

IF ever a government walked into a deal with its eyes wide shut, the Coalition did so in its controversial decision to indemnify the Church against compensation claims from victims of child abuse.

The Irish Examiner has already revealed that Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy was so unhappy with the deal being brokered between the Department of Education and 21 religious orders that he wrote to former Education Minister Michael Woods to voice his concerns. Yet, despite those misgivings, the Cabinet

collectively gave it the green light.

The proverbial chickens are now coming home to roost. To date, only a quarter of the land offered by CORI, the Conference of Religious of Ireland, to help compensate survivors of abuse, has proved acceptable to the Government. But even if the State looked for cash to the tune of the property in question, the religious orders are under no obligation to make such a donation.

The Government has no legal comeback because apparently, there is nothing in writing. On the face of it, the State has left itself no room for manoeuvre.

Given the shocking implications for taxpayers, the Government faces serious questions about its role in this fiasco. Why, for instance, was the Church given free rein while the State was effectively hog-tied?

Why did the Attorney General’s office copperfasten the legal aspects of a deal which is much more

beneficial to the Church than taxpayers who will pick up the lion’s share of the cost. This despite the fact while the State was culpable to a certain degree, the actual abuse of children was carried out by members of religious orders.

Equally bewildering was the Government’s decision to ring-fence the liabilities of the religious bodies while, at the same time, giving alleged abusers carte blanche to employ the firm of solicitors of their choice and to recruit as many barristers as they wished.

Yet, absolutely no limit was imposed on costs. As a result, cases that should have lasted days have been strung out for weeks as teams of lawyers adopted a highly adversarial approach to victims at the Laffoy Commission.

The State’s inexplicable failure to exact a more favourable deal from CORI flies in the face of the Taoiseach’s expression of surprise over the numbers seeking redress.

In reality, however, the figure of 1,700 applicants represents barely 1% of the children entrusted to the care of religious orders in State-funded institutions, where widespread abuse went on for decades under the gaze of the Department of Education, which is now in the dock while sponsoring the inquiry into child abuse.

Nor has Mr Dempsey been convincing in his attempt to explain away this grossly unsatisfactory situation.

Arguably, as no time-frame had been agreed, the wrangling between Church and State over donations could drag on for years.

So much for the promise to bring closure to an inquiry bogged down after the resignation of Ms Justice Mary Laffoy in protest over the Government’s lack of co-operation with its work.

So far, the Government has agreed to accept 32 properties worth 19.5 million. But while the State’s financial exposure could exceed 500m, the Church’s contribution was capped at 128m despite popular belief it should have paid far more.

In a further damage limitation exercise, Mr Dempsey wants the Comptroller and Auditor General to restrict his scrutiny of the deal to issues of expenditure rather than policy. That would be a travesty, however, because Government policy dictated this costly deal.