State wants schools from religious orders for redress costs [IrishTimes]
- Published: 06 July 2011
THE GOVERNMENT is to ask religious congregations named in the Ryan report to transfer ownership of schools to the State to make up a shortfall in its contribution to the €1.36 billion redress bill for victims of clerical sexual abuse.
Properties currently rented to the State will also be sought in lieu of cash or other payments, Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn said yesterday.
The Ryan report, which investigated the abuse of children in institutions run by 18 religious congregations, recommended they pay half the total redress costs, a figure set at about €680 million.
To date the congregations have offered €348.5 million, or roughly a quarter of the redress bill, faced by the taxpayer to compensate victims of abuse and to cover legal costs. This offer fell “well short, by several hundred million” of what the orders should bear “towards the cost of institutional residential child abuse”, the Minister said.
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