The Presentation Sister who helped negotiate the 2002 compensation agreement for abuse victims with the Government has said it may have been inadequate in the light of the information in the Ryan Report.
Sr Elizabeth Maxwell, who was secretary general of the Conference of Religious of Ireland (Cori), said today that at the time she was not aware of the extent of the abuse.
She also said she had remonstrated with the Government about the low validation threshold being set for compensation.
Speaking on BBC Radio
Ulster's Sequenceprogramme, Sr Maxwell said it had not been a mistake, but if the 18 congregations had known in 2002 what they know now about how children in their care had been abused the agreement would have been different.
"It may be inadequate in the light of new information that has come out in the Ryan report," she said.
She later told RTE's M
arian Finucane Showthat it was she who approached the Department of Education about the deal, because she had read about the establishment of the redress board and knew the 18 congregations in whose care the children had been abused were searching for a way to make some response.
The meetings were held in the offices of the Attorney General, she said, though then AG Michael McDowell was not present. The Department of Education legal advisor Tom Boland outlined the scheme devised by the Government and asked the congregations to become involved. The reasons for the request were both compassionate and pragmatic, she said.
Should the congregations insist on the court route, the Government could give 50 per cent of the claim and tell the claimants to go after the congregations for the balance. "It was the vista of 20 years of clogging up the courts that was the most compelling reason," she said.
At the time there were 780 people making claims, Sr Maxwell said.
She said she and the rest of her negotiation team, Sr Helena O'Donoghue and Br Kevin Mullan, remonstrated with the Government about the low validation threshold.
"We pointed out that it was very likely that the very low threshold... was likely to encourage claimants who had not yet come forward, and that proved to be true," she said.
The highest number of claims discussed as "worst case scenario" had been 2,000, she said, but they had ended up with 780.
"They began to fall through the letterbox like confetti," she said.
Sr Maxwell objected to the agreement with Government being called "a deal" because this suggested there had been something underhand, but the congregations had never lobbied or asked for favours.
Asked if she had tried to negotiate the figures down, she said "of course, isn't that what you do in negotiations?".
She said she was not aware, while she was negotiating, of the extent of the abuse, of the cover up and of the "awful horror" that was to be revealed in the Ryan report.
The highest figure put to them in negotiations was €100 million and they came up with that, she said. All of it had been handed over, except there may have been some delays about the final transfer of some property, because of delays in the State Solicitor's office and other solicitors' offices.
Asked if the congregations should hand over €15 billion to the scheme, an estimated figure of their value, Sr Maxwell said they had not been asked.
"We may arrive at some point like that when we speak to the Taoiseach ... the Government may not have to forcibly take anything from us," she said.
