THE state inquiry into clerical child abuse could end up costing more than the €128m paid out by the religious orders in compensation payments.Taxpayers will fork out up to €136m for the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, otherwise known as the Ryan Commission, which was originally expected to cost between €1.9m and €2.5m.
The extensive bill for 10 years of investigative work, culminating in last month's stark Ryan report, could even exceed the €128m the 18 religious orders offered to pay under its 2002 indemnity deal with the Government.
Redress
Since then, the Government has paid out over €1.2bn under the redress scheme -- 10 times what the religious orders paid.
The child abuse inquiry was expected to last just two years, but dragged on for 10 years because of delays and legal challenges.
In a new report published yesterday, the Comptroller & Auditor General (C&AG) John Buckley said the €136m estimate covers third-party representation costs of between €52m and €62m, administration costs of €30m, the commission's legal team costs of €15.73m and litigation costs of €2.22m.
It also covers the salaries of the chairpersons of up to €2m, and €8.5m to cover the outlay by the State in responding to the commission's inquiries. Within these costs, €928,582 was paid to "experts" who gave advice, guidance and assistance to the commission.
Two historians were also engaged at a cost of €176,634 to look at the history of the old reform schools and the context in which the institutional abuse took place.
Some €455,925 was paid to a service provider for scanning documents after the commission outsourced the work.
The report also found that a review of the testing of vaccines on children in the relevant religious institutions, which was abandoned, cost over €1m in "non-effective" expenditure. Asked last night if the €136m bill represented value for money, a spokesman for Education Minister Batt O'Keeffe said the C&AG had acknowledged that the work carried out by the Ryan Commission was necessary and valuable.
"It [C&AG report] doesn't, however, attempt to assess the value of the work. The commission's report has fulfilled the purpose for which it was established -- to tell the story of what happened and to make recommendations for the future," the spokesman told the Irish Independent.
Vindicated
"The report has been welcomed by the survivor groups and it has vindicated their claims of abuse. Neither the C&AG nor the department have carried out a specific value-for-money exercise."
The watchdog was also critical of the failure of the Commission, chaired by Justice Sean Ryan, to establish a financial management system which would assess possible legal and non-legal costs.
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