Measures required to ensure no repeat of failings of 2002 indemnity deal
Issued : Thursday 18 June, 2009
Statement by Pat Rabbitte TD
Minister for Communications, Energy & Natural Resources
I want to deal with a number of issues in the Institutional Child Abuse Bill relating to the original Indemnity Deal negotiated in 2002 and measures we are proposing to ensure that the errors that characterised that agreement are not repeated.
It is now widely acknowledged that the 2002 deal was less interested in protecting the taxpayer than in shielding the Religious Orders, to whom the state gave an immensely invaluable indemnity. It is clear that the Religious Congregations outfoxed and outmanoeuvred the Government; that the then Minister for Education, Dr. Michael Woods was a willing patsy in the process; and that the Cabinet failed to exercise adequate supervision over the process or examine the final agreement in any detail.
My colleague Roisin Shortall was the first to raise questions about the sweetheart deal, when she raised the matter on the Adjournment in the Dail on June 20th, within three week of the negotiations being concluded. I raised the matter, for instance, on no less than 13 occasions during Leaders Questions in 2003 and the only response I got from the then Taoiseach, Mr. Ahern and Dr. Woods was to be accused of anti-Catholicism and trying to bankrupt the Religious Orders.
On the day the Ryan Report was published, the Minister for Education, Batt O’Keeffe was insisting that there would be no re-opening of the 2002 deal. The fact that the government was subsequently forced by weight of public opinion to reopen negotiations with the Religious Congregations is an effective, if belated acknowledgement of the inadequacies of the 2002 deal.
There are three specific proposals contained in the Bill to ensure that we know the full story of how the 2002 deal was concluded and to ensure that the mistakes of 2002 are not repeated.
First, the Bill provides for a waiver of any claim to privilege, including legal professional privilege, in respect of records consisting of or relating to the 2002 agreement. The Bill dis-applies the privileges belonging to the Attorney General under the Freedom of Information Act 1997 in relation to records held by him. Those records will therefore become publicly available and open to public and media scrutiny. This will ensure that the full story of the 2002 negotiations can be told.
Second, the Bill requires that any future proposed agreement that seeks to amend or that is supplemental or ancillary to the original Deed of Indemnity, whether with any or all of those congregations cannot be made unless a draft of the agreement is first laid before both Houses of the Oireachtas and then approved by resolution of both Houses. This is a key provision as the 2002 Indemnity Deal was never brought before the Dail or Seanad for approval and was therefore never subjected to proper scrutiny by the Oireachtas.
Third, the Bill confers power on the Government to appoint an auditor to examine the financial affairs of the 18 Roman Catholic religious congregations who entered into the deed of indemnity. The Labour Party believes it is essential that we have independently verifiable information on the extent of the assets and resources of the Religious Congregations before a decision is made on the appropriate additional financial contribution that they must make to help survivors cope with the consequences of the appalling abuse inflicted on them in the Institutions concerned.
On this occasion the Religious Orders must be required to make fair reparation to the welfare of survivors. The scale and depth of the abuse inflicted and the harm done are so grievous that those responsible must not on this occasion be facilitated in evading their duty.
The Ryan Report concluded that when complaints were bought to the attention of the Religious Orders:
‘they chose to protect the institutions and the reputation of the congregations rather than the children’.
Therefore shielding the Religious Orders is not the duty of the state; the state rather has a duty to mediate fair reparation for citizens who were subjected to the tyranny of the regime in the residential institutions.
