Taoiseach Brian Cowen is meeting representatives from religious orders at Government Buildings today to discuss their response to the Ryan report. Mr Cowen is also expected to discuss an increase in the amount that congregations contribute by way of reparation to abuse victims.
There has been widespread criticism of the deal stuck between the Government and 18 orders in 2002 which capped the orders' contribution at €127 million.
The Taoiseach last night promised groups representing victims of child abuse in institutions run by religious orders that those congregations would make “substantial” additional contributions.
Mr Cowen and four Government Ministers met some eight groups representing victims of child abuse for almost three hours at Government Buildings to discuss the outcome of the Ryan report.
Minister for Education Batt O’Keeffe, Minister for Health Mary Harney, Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern, and Minister for Children Barry Andrews were all present at the meeting. As they emerged from last night's discussions, representatives said that good and positive progress had been made during the meeting, though some fundamental issues required clarification.
No firm indication was given to the groups as to the contribution the Government will seek from religious congregations and if it will be in the region of 50 per cent of the overall costs. Leading church and political figures, including Government Chief Whip Pat Carey, have suggested the orders should contribute half of the costs.
A Government statement released last night said that Mr Cowen had stressed that those who perpetrated child sex abuse crimes, no matter how long ago, must be made amenable to the law so that they can be held to account for such crimes.
The Ryan report, which was published last month, includes evidence of abuse from over 1,000 survivors of the orphanages, industrial schools and reformatory schools, some 500 of which related to sexual abuse by members of religious orders, teachers and other lay workers.
The Government publications office was yesterday awaiting delivery of hundreds more copies of the child abuse report after it ran out of stock due to “exceptional” demand.
Huge public interest has also put the Ryan commission’s website under severe strain, with additional servers and bandwidth being added to cope with unexpectedly high visitor numbers.
Some 90,000 separate downloads of the report were logged in the first 24 hours after the publication of the report two weeks ago, and 183,000 files have been downloaded in all.
The commission, which continues to receive new requests for the document every day, expects delivery of the second batch of its 2,500-copy print run in the coming days.
Applicant witnesses, survivors’ groups and Government departments are provided with copies free of charge, while the publications office charges €20 for a hard copy set or €10 for the disk. It already has a waiting list of between 400 and 500 names for hard copies of the five-volume set.
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