THERE WAS a significant reduction in payments by Killaloe’s Catholic diocese arising from clerical sex abuse, according to diocesan accounts for 2011 published yesterday.
They show that €20,748 was paid under that heading last year compared to €428,162 in 2009 and 2010. It brings to €2.44 million the total paid to survivors of clerical abuse there since 2003.
Diocesan spokesman Fr Brendan Quinlivan said yesterday that such payments to survivors came from a special fund, called the Bishop’s House donation, established from the sale of six acres of land beside the Bishop’s House in Ennis.
The 2011 accounts also show that the diocese received over €1 million from a will which stipulated that the money could not be used for the day-to-day running of the diocese.
They confirmed that the diocese got an additional €468,074 from the same benefactor last year, bringing the total donated by that person to €1.048 million.
The deceased decreed that the money be used for the promotion of vocations and the education of priests. Killaloe diocese has just one man in training for the priesthood, at Maynooth, who will be ordained in 2015.
Fr Quinlivan described the legacy as “an expression of hope by that person that more will come for the priesthood and that there will be an increase in vocations”.
The diocesan accounts also showed that an additional €200,000 had been received from an anonymous donor last year.
Fr Quinlivan confirmed this took place last December after it emerged that priests of the diocese were paying from their own pockets to keep it out of the red.
The 2011 accounts confirmed that Killaloe priests paid a combined €131,312 from their annual salaries, ranging from €22,000 to €27,240, to bring the total donated by the priests to the diocese between 2009 and 2011 to €475,225. Fr Quinlivan said donations from priests ranged from €1,000 to €3,000 a year each.
He said an additional €151,374 was received from other bequests last year compared to €9,132 in 2010. Added to the priests’ contribution, it meant the diocese could record a surplus of €220,334 in 2011, compared to a €93,941 surplus in 2010.
