Fr Sean Healy, the director of the Justice Office of CORI, the organisation which represents the leaders of religious orders in Ireland, recently wrote to this newspaper alleging that claims made in this column were untrue; and I am afraid he is right. I wish to apologise for misleading readers.
Fr Healy complained that this column reported, in his words, that "in its recent statement on the forthcoming Budget the Conference of Religious of Ireland proposed the Government should increase taxes"; and he also claimed that I had reported that religious were exempt from tax.
"Both of these claims are untrue," he says. No doubt they are. Had they been made, that is, but they weren't made. I simply never said that CORI had proposed a tax increase in the next Budget. What I did say was that CORI was in the habit of making declarations on taxation and the need for more of it - as opposed, that is, to less of it. CORI roundly condemned the last tax-cuts - which actually helped the poor considerably - even though CORI says it is in favour of an economic culture which abolishes dependency. Good. High-tax dependency is the economic miracle which in a trice can transform Switzerland into Tanzania - but a very virtuous Tanzania.
Ruairi Quinn
And I didn't say all religious were exempt from all tax. Religious schoolteachers and religious nurses for example, pay tax; but only as of recently, and not because they volunteered to, but because Ruairi Quinn ended the little wheeze by which the State income to State-paid members of religious orders in State-subsidised but religious-run institutions were covenanted directly to the orders themselves, thereby partially exempting them from tax. This was a dazzling social arrangement, perpetuated into pensiondom, and involving a net transfer of untaxed resources from the State into the coffers of the religious orders - no doubt at the very time the heads of these religious orders were denouncing taxcuts for others.
However, I began by saying that Fr Healy had alleged I had been in error; and it is true, I was factually wrong in the Diary about which he complained. But the error was not one he pointed out. I reported that religious orders had to pay 20 per cent capital gains tax on the huge property sales with which they have been transforming the Dublin property market; and I was wrong. In fact, their status as religious orders exempts them even from that level of tax, provided the money is used for religious purposes, whatever that means.
Land assets
The religious orders, the bright lads and lasses who have been denouncing the Minister for Finance for cutting the taxes of other people, actually pay no tax at all on the largest realisation of land assets in history since Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries. The religious orders of Ireland - CORI to you and me - in terms of both cash and assets are probably the richest group of people in Ireland. Even now, after selling the land-banks around the city of Dublin, they remain the owners of vast tracts of property in Dublin, Wicklow, Kildare and Louth. There are nearly 700 convents listed in the 01 area telephone directory (very few of them are in Darndale). There are about 200 supermarket listings in the same area. In other words, we have nearly three times as many convents (never mind male religious) in greater Dublin as we have supermarkets, and all living in a world virtually free of capital gains tax.
Not just capital gains. Who keeps count on religious moneys? Who audits their accounts? Nobody, according to the Companies Act, 1963, Section 126. Any company under the control of a religion recognised by the State "under Article 44 of the Constitution" is exempt from the requirement to return to the Companies Office a certified balance sheet, or an auditors' and directors' report. Even though the people of Ireland disposed of the recognised-religions clause of the Constitution in 1972, those religions still enjoy the benefits of a zero-tax regime - but not later arrivals, such as Islam.
Tax exemptions
This is, of course, discriminatory and illegal within European law, as, probably, is the exemption of church material from VAT. Plain, white cylindrical candles, for example, are VAT-free; and pilgrimage-flights to shrines such as Lourdes are exempt from the travel tax - but of course, wheelchairs and other secular aids for the disabled, the sick, the dying are not.
There might be all sorts of arguments to justify the special position of the religious orders within our tax regime, though for the moment I can think of none. On the other hand, there are many arguments in favour of CORI being reluctant to condemn tax reductions when CORI members live in a world whose capital assets will be untouched by tax confiscations, and whose accounts remain a mystery to us all - even, most probably, the Revenue Commissioners.
In other words, the nice thing which enables CORI to grow such luxuriant and exotic taxfree plants is a glasshouse; and there is a saying about people who enjoy the shelter of such accommodation - though I can't quite remember what it is. Perhaps Fr Healy would be good enough to remind me.