The Irish government is to ask religious orders to hand
over title to property worth up to €200 million, the Department of
Education has confirmed.
The €200 million is the
shortfall the State considers it is owed by the 18 religious orders
which agreed to share the cost of the €1.36 billion bill for survivors
of institutional abuse.
Last year the 18
congregations named in the Ryan report on clerical sexual abuse agreed
to pay €476 million towards the cost of compensation.
As this is €200
million short of an even split of the bill with the State, proposals for
the remaining payment are being sought.
It is
understood the religious orders paid €128 million in 2002. Some €110
million was promised in cash and €235 million was promised in property.
Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn has pointed out this amount leaves
the €200 million shortfall, and he is now seeking the transfer to the
State of the legal ownership of religious-owned schools to meet this
deficit.
A spokeswoman for the Department of
Education confirmed Mr Quinn was seeking transfer of
ownership of the some of the schools to the State, but even these are
likely to become multi-denominational rather than secular schools.
Mr
Quinn has indicated he did not want to bankrupt the religious orders
and was not intending to change the structure by which the religious
orders were able to continue to be in charge of the schools.
The Church
is still talking of a 'minimum non-negotiable requirement' with any
schools transferred, insisting on no change on confessional religious
instruction.
The Minister’s concern is said to be in
relation to the amount of the total compensation bill which will have
to be paid by the taxpayer, as well he might, given his Government’s
parlous financial position.
The current overwhelming dominance in the
publicly funded sector of Catholic schools insisting on confessional
religious instruction as part of the school day is believed by the Irish
Human Rights Commission to breach the European Convention on Human
Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the
Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
The
Executive Director of the National Secular Society, Keith Porteous
Wood, observed: “The Irish state is in unprecedented need of hard cash
and the promised transfer of assets by the Church to the State achieves
virtually nothing unless those assets are ones that can be realised,
which cannot be true of the schools. The citizens of Ireland are in
danger of being duped and abused yet again by their church and their
Government.”