FORMER Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, the man who apologised on behalf of the State to the victims of clerical abuse, said yesterday there was no point in re-examining the compensation deal as the Church had no money.The Cabinet is set to discuss the explosive Ryan Report, when it meets on Tuesday and will decide whether to ask the Attorney General to see if it is legally possible for the 2002 compensation deal, signed by then-Education Minister Michael Woods, to be re-negotiated.
Controversy has erupted as the State is set to be landed with a €1bn-plus bill to deal with all the compensation, while the Church paid just €128m.
Already legal fees of €140m have been paid, substantially more than the Catholic Church's contribution.
While there have been mixed signals coming from various members of the Cabinet in the past few days, Mr Ahern said yesterday that there was little point in re-negotiating the deal.
Speaking to the Sunday Independent, he said: "I remember when I did the deal, most of the Church properties would be schools, churches, facilities -- they are totally unsalable [sic]. Who would buy them? It would be the Government, so what's the point?"
When asked if he thought the Church had any money to meet the claims bill, he said: "I don't think they do. If somebody can find that they do have money, well good luck to them. But look at the Dublin Diocese -- I don't think they have huge assets, but that doesn't get away from the main point that what happened in these institutions was horrendous. But at the end of the day it was the State who put them in to those institutions, so the State is responsible."
He added the State didn't need to apologise again and said it was correct that those who are convicted of abuse should receive tough penalties. "No, we've already done that, we gave a fulsome apology and we have given 10 years of a commitment to it," Mr Ahern said.
"There is still a load of prosecutions going on. Those are still alive and still in the system and when they come up they get very tough sentences, and that's no harm. There is no doubt there was horrendous abuses to many young, innocent people."
Further reports into abuse claims in the Dublin Archdiocese and Cloyne, which are to set out the systemic abuse suffered by many in care, have been held up for legal reasons but are due for publication sometime before the summer recess.
Mr Ahern also denied the deal was done hastily. He said: "No -- it had gone on for ages, and we were more anxious to get it all wrapped up, and get the tribunal (Ryan) going, and get the system going.
At the time, we didn't think so many people would get the resources, but what happened in the end is that everyone in the institution got money, whether they were abused or not. Maybe there was no harm in that -- they had a tough life."
The Public Accounts Committee will discuss next week whether it can revisit the settlement while a leading priest called on religious orders to face up to their moral obligation to do more for abuse victims.
Education Minister Batt O'Keeffe repeated yesterday that it was his legal advice that the Government could not re-negotiate the deal.
Speaking to the Sunday Independent he stopped short of saying that religious orders should pay more for victims.
"I would like the religious orders to study fundamentally the graphic nature of what is contained within the report and to study the implications of that for themselves in terms of reputational damage, and to look at how we could move forward in the future," he said.
"The Church does make a massive contribution already in terms of providing land and purchasing land for schools right around this country. I would be very disappointed if that was forgotten."
Opposition parties have led the charge against the deal, demanding religious orders should pay more. The orders have refused to elaborate on a Cori (Conference of Religious of Ireland) statement which said that none of the orders planned to revisit the deal.
Fr Sean Healy, the high-profile Cori priest, failed to return calls yesterday from this newspaper. Religious orders contacted by this newspaper referred journalists back to the Cori statement.
Fr Peter McVerry, the Jesuit priest and campaigner for the homeless, said the religious orders should be doing more for abuse victims.
"The religious orders should have a moral obligation to contribute as much as they possibly can without interfering with their good and necessary work," he said.
Mr Woods, speaking on RTE radio yesterday, also said the religious institutions do not have as much resources as people believe.
He said: "They had to sell properties. You began to find that the vast majority of these holdings were schools, hospitals or care centres because they started all these in this country, not the State."
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