AN INDEPENDENT audit of assets belonging to the 18 religious congregations which were party to a controversial 2002 redress agreement with the State, is expected to be presented to the Government at a meeting this afternoon.
The congregations, whose management of residential institutions for children led to the recent Ryan report, agreed to the audit at a meeting on June 5th with Taoiseach Brian Cowen and Government colleagues Dermot Ahern, Batt O’Keeffe, Mary Harney and Barry Andrews. They will also attend today’s meeting.
The congregations agreed then to contribute to a trust proposed by the Taoiseach so that further financial and other supports can be provided to people who had been in the institutions as children. The religious also committed themselves to identifying resources, “both financial and other, within a transparent process with a view to delivering upon commitments” made at that meeting.
The Taoiseach had told the congregations that he “must express the dismay and abhorrence which, with the whole of the population, we have experienced on reading the [Ryan] report”. He noted that “some of the severest conclusions reached by the [Ryan] commission regarding religious orders relate to recent attitudes and behaviour”.
He told them that further substantial contributions are required by way of reparation and that these “need to be capable of being assessed by the public for their significance by reference to the full resources available to the congregations and in a context of the costs of well over a billion euro being incurred by the State”.
Calling for a comprehensive, specific response from the congregations, he reminded them that the response may have profound implications for the wellbeing of survivors of abuse in affirming their dignity. “It may also influence how the Irish people, who have been so loyally supportive of your congregations over many years, may judge finally the extent to which your organisations live up to their foundational values.”
In the High Court today, Mr Justice Daniel O’Keeffe is expected to rule on a legal challenge to a refusal by the Residential Institutions Redress Board to accept an application on grounds of late application for its redress scheme, established in 2002.
The man bringing the challenge, now in his 70s, had been in St Patrick’s industrial school at Upton in Cork for six years in the 1940s and 1950s where he claimed he was abused. He has argued his situation constituted exceptional circumstances.
