THE 18 religious orders responsible for the worst abuses of children in residential institutions have been given two weeks to divulge the full extent of their wealth.Representatives of all 18 attended a meeting with the Taoiseach and government ministers yesterday at which they agreed to make a fresh contribution towards the compensation and support of abuse survivors.
However, while the Government side said afterwards the orders had been asked for, and had agreed to, make a "substantial" additional contribution, the orders stopped short of indicating the scale of the payments they intended making.
"All of us committed ourselves to making a financial contribution and a contribution of other resources as are needed," said Fr Joe O’Reilly, of the Rosminian order, when speaking on behalf of the congregations following two hours of talks at Government Buildings.
He would not put a figure on the sums envisaged or quantify them as a proportion of the orders’ wealth, pleading for time to compile inventories of their assets.
The language used by the two sides also differed in respect of the way the wealth tallies are to be conducted. Minister for Education Batt O’Keeffe said the orders’ assets would be independently evaluated. "They have indicated that they are willing to have an independent audit. We want to allow them the space of two weeks to put in place such audits," he said.
Fr Joe O’Reilly was less specific, however, saying only: "We have also committed ourselves to identifying all of our resources both financial and other resources and to begin that process immediately."
Survivors’ representatives voiced frustration that the orders had not gone to the meeting with their accounts ready for scrutiny.
"They should have been there today with all of their money on the table," said Christine Buckley of the Aislinn support group.
Both sides at the meeting were at one in insisting there would be full transparency about the orders’ wealth. "Everybody will be able to see what our situation is and will be able to judge it," Fr O’Reilly said.
They also agreed that a trust would be set up to administer the contributions and that the orders would not be involved in running it. "We have committed ourselves to not having a role in the distribution of funds by the trust," said Fr O’Reilly.
The meeting followed three hours of talks between survivors’ groups, the Taoiseach and a team of ministers on Wednesday. The groups demanded the 18 orders be forced to hand over their wealth to the support of victims after initially escaping with paying just 10% of the cost of the €1.3 billion redress bill in the notorious 2002 indemnity deal.
Faced with a similar government team of Taoiseach Brian Cowen, Justice Minister Dermot Ahern, Health Minister Mary Harney, Education Minister Batt O’Keeffe and Children’s Minister Barry Andrews yesterday, Fr O’Reilly said the orders had repeated their apologies.
"The Taoiseach did express some criticism of our responses to Ryan [the Ryan Report on institutional child abuse] and our response in other situations and we have had to take that criticism on board and we accept what he said."
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