THE fight between the Government and 18 religious orders over a €500
million point of principle has been laid bare for the first time.
The
critical issue, which is no closer to being resolved, is the
Government’s insistence that 50% of a €1.5bn redress bill should be met
by the congregations responsible for running institutions probed by the
Ryan Report.
A €127m contribution was agreed under a 2001 indemnity deal. Further offers were made in 2009.
But the Department of Education feels the combination is still €500m
short of the €750m target set in the Programme for Government.
The request has been rejected by almost all of the orders involved, with
varying degrees of disdain for the tactics adopted by successive
governments in a bid to deliver on it.
Details of three years’ worth of negotiations between the orders and the
Department of Education and the congregations have now been released.
The publication of these papers became possible after the Coalition
abandoned a hard-line strategy in July. This had included an expressed
attempt to seek the total transfer of education infrastructure into the
State’s ownership. It was to be explicitly in lieu of cash payments to
the redress scheme.
The department has deemed this process to be over and, as a consequence,
decided that communications from the negotiations should be made
public.
The original commitment in the Programme for Government, agreed by the
Coalition in 2011, targeted schools’ assets as an alternative means of
getting religious orders to increase the value of their offers.
“We will negotiate the transfer of school infrastructure currently owned
by 18 religious orders cited in the Ryan Report, at no extra cost, to
the State.
“In principle, school buildings and land will be zoned for educational
use, so that they cannot easily be sold and lost to system,” it said.
This line was softened by the Cabinet in July following a proposal by
the department to accept properties, but allow congregations to remain
in control of the assets and take control of land that had been put into
trust. The idea, as detailed in a proposal to the minister in February,
was to de-couple the redress dispute from the wider school patronage
issue and seek to reach the same end by a different route.
This came after a difficult 2012 which began with letters from the
minister to each of the orders involved, restating his position on the
Programme for Government and seeking views on an alternative approach to
the transfer of education assets. There had been meetings throughout
2011, in groups and individually, but by and large the offers that were
made by the orders in late 2009 remained.
Broadly, the orders fall into three categories: Those who say they
cannot pay, those who say they will not pay and those who say they may
pay a little more under certain conditions.
In some cases, such as the Daughters of Charity, the Sisters of Charity
and the Christian Brothers, the cash commitments were delayed or shelved
due to the depressed property market.
Other congregations, such as the Presentation Brothers, made small
amendments to their offers to increase the likely value to the State.
The most powerful religious order, the Sisters of Mercy, said its
voluntary offer was non-negotiable. A briefing note, prepared for the
minister in January ahead of a meeting with Taoiseach Enda Kenny and
Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore on the Programme for Government, summarised the
State’s stance.
“Clearly there is a wide gap to realise a 50% contribution and the
minister proposed the transfer of school infrastructure at no cost to
the State as one mechanism to allow those involved the opportunity to
shoulder their share of the costs.
“The schools involved would continue in their own ethos until they
decide otherwise. However, the responses from the congregations continue
to be most disappointing,” it said.
The position had barely moved from Education Minister Ruairi Quinn’s
correspondence of Feb 2012, in which he expressed frustration at the
attitude of the orders and, as he set out in a letter to the De La Salle
order, the Government did not want to deviate from the desire to split
the €1.5bn bill.
“I wish to confirm that the 50:50 approach was taken in the light of the
resources available to the congregations. I have confirmed that the
present Government believes that a 50:50 approach is right and just in
the light of the Ryan Report and the capacity of the congregations to
meet their share of the costs incurred,” Mr Quinn said.
Many of the orders wrote back revealing anger at the State’s handling of
the redress scheme and, in particular, the decision to extend it in
2005.
Orders such as the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity said the Government is
simply looking for retrospective agreement to cover the costs it
incurred because of poor administration of the redress scheme.
Many of the orders feel they have made concessions but the State has not
been able to provide information required to progress talks.
One of the key problems has been the confidentiality clause attached to
the Redress Board. This prevents the orders getting an order- by-order
breakdown of the awards.
Such a breakdown was requested to allow the orders to decide which of
them should carry the greater burden as they are now dealing with the
State as individual groups, rather than as a unit under the umbrella of
CORI.
In a statement to the Irish Examiner the Trustees of the Brothers of
Charity said that without this information, the orders were left in the
dark. “Based on the best calculations that can be made from the
information available, the trustees are of the opinion that the
contributions they have already made amount to at least a 50:50 sharing
of the costs.
“Also, arising from previous meetings with the minister, there was an
expectation that every effort would be made to provide those responsible
for managing the institutions concerned with accurate information with
regard to the costs incurred and the trustees feel that only if and when
that information can be provided will they be able to ascertain with
any greater certainty what the actual position may be in respect of the
contributions they have made,” it said.
This is a position articulated by many other, particularly smaller orders, in correspondence with the department.
However, the tone and direction underpinning the original Programme for
Government commitment was obviously targeted at two orders who for the
best part of a century controlled much of the Irish school system.
The Sisters of Mercy and the Christian Brothers have both moved to push
education sites into trusts and have flatly refused to accept the
approaches of the State.
The Sisters of Mercy has told the minister it made a voluntary offer in 2009 and that was final.
It also expressed resentment at the Programme for Government demand and
it said that while this stood, talks on school patronage could not
happen.
“In the course of several letters and meetings, I have explained our
position that we are not responsible for a 50:50 cost sharing.
“The congregation of the Sisters of Mercy has not made any agreement
with the Government to pay half of the State’s expenditure in respect of
redress and [the Commission to inquire into Child Abuse],” the
congregational leader Sr Coirle McCarthy said.
Meanwhile the Christian Brothers said it was the Government’s problem.
“On the question of the 50:50 sharing of costs I would make the following observations.
“Firstly, it is notable that no such principle was ever discussed and
secondly, the concept was never mooted until after the publication of
the Ryan Report and after the submission of voluntary incremental offers
by the congregations in November 2009.
“In this respect it is a unilateral construct developed retrospectively
without consultation and without regard to the ability to pay,” said its
province leader Brother JK Mullan.
Other orders feel their sins were not as great as others and asked the department to leave them alone.
The De La Salle brothers said none of its brothers were ever convicted
of a criminal offence and the threat of litigation was the only reason
it agreed to its initial contribution.
The chairman of its provincial council, Brother Francis Manning, said
the State alone was to blame for the increased costs of redress because
it extended the scheme from 2005 to 2011.
And it said the proposal in the Programme for Government was not something it would consider.
“The transfer of schools to the State is not an issue of patronage but
of the inalienable right of the congregation to dispose of its property
as its sees fit,” said Brother Manning.
The financial standing of other, smaller, congregations has given them
cause to ask the State to relent in its demands for more money. The
province leader of the Good Shepherd Sisters, Sr Bernadette McNally,
said it was dependent on its investment portfolio to fund its services
and it needed money to care for its elderly members.
The Daughters of Charity is one of the orders that has not only refused
to entertain the idea of additional contributions to the redress fund,
but has also found it difficult to honour its original promise.
In letters to the minister in 2012 the Daughters of Charity said the
collapse of the property market had created “immense problems” in its
attempt to sell property to fund the bulk of its €10m commitment to the
statutory fund.
The order told the minister his department had been made aware that its
original promise was linked to its plan to sell land assets. And it
believed the concept of a 50:50 cost sharing between the orders and the
State was “impossible for us to consider”.