Irish Catholic sex abuse compensation offer falls short

Ireland’s religious orders are failing to meet their share of an estimated €1.36 billion compensation bill for victims of sex abuse, Education Minister Ruairi Quinn said.

Predominantly Catholic Ireland has been rocked by a series of child sex abuse scandals involving clerics.

A government report found “horrendous child abuse” occurred over decades in state-funded childcare institutions run by 18 religious congregations.

The debt-laden government wants the congregations to share victims’ compensation costs on a 50-50 basis with the taxpayer.

But Mr Quinn said that the offers from the religious congregations had so far “fallen far short of the amount needed”.

“The congregations’ total offers fall well short, by several hundred million, of the 680 million euros contribution they should bear towards the cost of institutional residential child abuse,” he said in a statement.

Quinn said that despite the state’s call for the congregations to supplement earlier offers “only two out of the 18 congregations have replied positively to make up a shortfall of some €200 million.”

“One congregation has offered to give €1million towards the costs of the National Children’s Hospital and to refund some or all of its legal costs, while another offered to transfer a former primary school.

“None of the other congregations have supplemented their original offers.”

Many schools in Ireland are owned by the Catholic Church and transferring their ownership to the state is one way religious orders can pay some of the compensation bill.

Mr Quinn has now written to the orders seeking a meeting to discuss their response to date.

By the end of May, a state compensation tribunal had finalised 13,669 of 15,135 compensations claims from abuse victims and paid out an average of €62,875 per person.