Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
RELIGIOUS CONGREGATIONS STILL owe almost €15 million towards a fund set up to help people who experienced abuse in Irish institutions.
Caranua is an independent state body which was set up in 2012 to administer the €110 million special investment account opened by the National Treasury Management Agency to help survivors.
It pays for services and gives grants to people depending on their needs and circumstances.
This fund is separate to the redress scheme but people are only eligible if they went through the redress board or received court awards.
A spokesperson for Caranua told TheJournal.ie that there have been around 5,000 applications for help since being set up four years ago and around €58 million of the account has been used.
The Minister for Education and Skills Richard Bruton and gave a breakdown of contributions of €94.7 million as follows:
(For a larger image of the above table, click here)
He added that €96.1 million in Ryan Report contributions have been lodged to the special investment account so far.
Property
In 2012, it was also agreed that 61 properties would be accepted from religious institutions subject to good and marketable title and agreed valuations.
Now, 14 years later 13 of the properties have still to be transferred from the religious orders.
Of the 48 properties that have been fully transferred, the top ten most valuable were listed as:
The Education Minister added that “work is continuing to finalise the arrangements in relation to the remaining properties”.
A full list of the properties transferred can be found here.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
The Catholic Church should be forced to cease all operations in Ireland until the remainder of the monies owed for child abuse have been paid, and they repay the tax-payer’s contribution on top of that, the tax-payer should never have been made bailout an organisation that raped and abused children and women.
@Joey Westland: What politician, from FG/FF/SF/L would do that and I’d have kicked them all out until they sorted it.
I agree with you in a sense but I don’t think it would be very fair on the old lady who couldn’t go to mass because the church owes the state money
Will the Catholic-bashers now run these facilities for no pay but their keep.
@Tom Newnewman: Paid for by the people of Ireland, not the Church, therefore they belong to the people of Ireland, not the Church.
All operations ?
St . V de P?
Brother Kevin and the Capuchin?
Meals on wheels?
Trocaire?
Focus Ireland?
RDS Christmas dinner fed 3000 people this year?
I could go on.
Tom Newnewman, when were the facilities run for nothing but the keep of of the people running them? The State paid support, people made donations which were not taxable to the charities, and these institutions held a position of great influence at all levels of society. Not to mention the “donations” made by adoptive parents of children born to unmarried women. If they were only working for their keep, where did their wealth come from ? Genuine question
Many of the men and women who led and lead the Catholic Church bashed endless numbers of children women and men physically verbally and emotionally in Ireland and across the world in the past and continue to do so to this day .
Before you go on I think you need to look at the facts mort of these organizations are not staffed by lay professionals or volunteers. Brother Kevin is the exception. Most funding comes in through government grants…see annual reports. Even the ones that are associated with religious brands are rarely staffed by the orders due to a lack of available manpower.
Typos sorry
All supported by good people from all denominations. Christians agnostics atheists etc etc etc . I can vouch for that in a personal capacity. I have never seen Mr. Martin helping out. These organisations would not survive without the direct support of non catholics whether it’s in financial terms , a physical presence or professional services . I am deeply aware of a particular meals on wheels that supports over 60 people a day that is successful on the back of the support staffing both professional and voluntary that thrives without “the Catholic ” tag . There are indeed many catholics who also volunteer but it is thankfully no longer the preserve of catholics as Catholic institutions
Joey those presents you gave at christmas, are they yours or the people you gave them to?
Miriam , even if they are staffed by kay people ( who are generally RC) they are Catholic Church activities and the first commentator wants them stopped.
While their is no denying that the church has done many bad things, there is no denying that it does and continues to do many great charitable activities.
Unfortunately Brian as is always the way with the Catholic Church terms and conditions apply . The RC in Ireland applies it’s rigorous nonsense in creating soft barriers. I’m speaking from experience having examined in detail the soft barriers applied across many RC charities. They don’t get involved or set up charities that are not of the RC ethos .
Dara are you ever happy? An organisation that supports groups that have similar beliefs. Shock horror.
The ethos is pretty straightforward and believes in helping others and those who need help.
@brian magee: No Brian – Catholic ethos schools – where we all as a people pay via the state all of their expenses – including maintenance and refurbishment of all buildings (and often complete rebuilding) – cater for their own. You can only attend if you are willing to endure the Catholic ethos, which is pushed throughout the entire school day. Despite being in reality state schools, with the church’s only contribution to impose a Catholic ethos, they are allowed exclude and discriminate against non-Catholics.
Equally, services like Accord – who received about 4 million in state funding in 2014 (and nothing from the church) to deliver a country-wide marriage guidance service to citizens, and is an agency of the bishops, will not provide its service to LGBT couples and only provides marriage preparation courses for people who marry in the Catholic Church. Another way we are all funding the church to deliver services to its own members.
Liddy guess what? The IWA Irish wheelchair association receive state funding too but only help the disabled. Should they stop?
I’m sure that there is a LGBT group that revive funding for Similar activities as accord.
Tremendously happy thanks for asking. I’m just averse to an organisation ( your words ) that discriminates against women children and others on a daily basis. The Ryan report can assist you in fuller understanding Brian .
@Joey Westland: You mean a ceasefire, where the state allow,s them to carry on with their fairy tales. once they pay up. SURE THAT IS NO SOLUTION, they will just create another mess, or with a bit of luck just disappear into the archaic dustbin of history.
How much has gone where it should and how much of a chunk has been taken from it by solicitors and middle men.
99.999 legal and middle men
Where did you get that figure Tom? Can you provide a link?
Thats cheap for Terenure school.
@gold3n:
No mention of the deal agreed between the religious Orders and the government where money and property was handed over to the State in exchange for immunity from prosecution.
True.
FactCheck it.
@Christy Nolan: Do you mean the generous state bail-out the orders received, whereby we all have now paid 1.5 billion via the state to compensate victims of religious orders’ past abuse? The state scandalously only asked the orders to pay a token amount towards this (but still amounting to hundreds of millions), but even so many of the orders have still not paid what they promised. The Government is still supposed to be seeking at least half of that 1.5 billion but many of the orders have since put their assets beyond reach in trusts. Not our debt, but we are stuck with it.
@Little Diddy No: The RCC God squad has cost this country dearly with huge monetary compensation costs and for enquiries, (and they are still not complete.) The sexual damage done to young boy’s girl’s and adult’s, by some of their recruit’s and offshoots. The physical, and psychological damage done by their sadism, and cruelty. In any true Republic they would be asked by the elected Government to pack their tents and head off into the sunset with their fairy tales, about Virgin Birth’s Water into wine, Miracles , Noah’s arc, and the rest of unverifiable nonsense they preach. They can leave all their questionable gotten wealth and property behind, it belong’s to the citizen’s who have contributed to their upkeep of their Palaces, and big houses for generation’s. It is payback time we have suffered enough at their hand’s.
Sisters of Mercy €25.1 million says it all really….
@Kerry Blake: All built with the money they siphoned from the poor at the collection plates, we all know what their ‘reward’ was for those forced contributions.
‘Poor’? Did only the poor attend mass?
Since when was a collection a forced contribution?
Whichever estate agent brokered these deals is laughing their heads off or they were desperate to sell
@Jackson Bollovks:
The deal was brokered and rushed through without consultation and just days before the election by the politicians(FF) of the day.
FG’s Brian Hayes said that his FG Party would “look into” the deal but it turned out to be just another empty promise. And the filth got away scot free.
As punishment the Church should lose some of its schools to multidenominational
Rosa Parks, if we learn anything it should be that religion should be a separate issue to general education, which should be up to the state. Religious instruction should be up to the parents and their particular beliefs, and religion be a part of the history syllabus, nothing to do with faith formation.
@Noirin Kavanagh:
The general trend in responses to denominational Christianity and especially its failings is less than balanced among the Journal readership and certainly due to the influences that work against the spirituality that is often diluted under the term ‘religion’. In this respect the greatest failing of the Church happened hundreds of years ago which split apart the human perception that spirituality is one thing and the physical world is something else or religion vs science as it has become known where the Church consigned itself to dealing with human behavior and jettisoned its astronomical heritage.
If anyone here feels uncomfortable with ‘facts’, feel inferior
@Rosa Parks: The state stupidly agreed to bail out the religious orders by agreeing to limit the orders’ liability towards victims of the orders’ abuse. The orders were only asked to pay a token sum amounting to millions. The final bill for redress to victims came to almost 1.5 billion – and we suckers all have to pay that on behalf of the church. Yet, incredibly, even the token amounts the orders DID agree to hand over in buildings and cash have still not been handed over, years later. Most of the orders have put their assets beyond reach now in trusts.
That is why the government needs to be more robust in getting those buildings the orders promised so we can open the multi-d schools that a majority of parents say they want. The Government said they are still committed to recouping half that 1.5 billion from the orders – fat chance, since they cannot even get the token few million that the orders are legally obliged to hand over.
They are the richest cult in the world
The church has land in most areas, around churches, etc. This should be donated for the communities, whether it be sports areas for kids(which are fast disappearing) or some other use that benefits the people who live in each area. They have leached off us for years, subverted our republic and preyed on some of the most vulnerable in our society, they should be made to pay in a way that helps remedy the maladies they have inflicted upon us , not in silver. I know there are good as well as bad, but the organization has had an unbelievable detrimental effect on irish life over the last 100 years. To deny this is to be experiencing some form of stockholm syndrome.
Terrible journalism, “Terenure Secondary School” here is NOT referring to Terenure College, the Carmelite-run school. I presume the school mentioned is Presentation Secondary School in Terenure Village. The picture shown here is of the wrong school…
For many years, with the consent and support of the State, the Catholic church ran these schools and other institutions. Of course, they had a moral and legal responsibility to their charges. They should be culpable to at least fifty percent of the ensuing reparations. The State, through neglect, should be responsible for the balance. Of course, this means that the taxpayer will have to fork out yet again.
It really is high time that the formal education of our youth, is taken completely away from any religious influences. Education should be about the forming and shaping of young person’s minds and bodies. They should be taught only facts and thus be left to think for themselves. This would produce a much better informed, mature and independently thinking young person. The indoctrination of religion should not come into it. Of course, parents, if they wish, can pass on their own ethos and beliefs to their children at home. That is the place for it.
The vast majority of the country’s schools are owned and run by the Catholic church, through the various orders and dioceses. They are virtually 100% staffed by lay teachers who are paid entirely by the State. These teachers are presently obligated to further the religious ethos of the school and to conduct religious classes. This situation cannot be left to continue.
Is it that radical to assert that all schools should be taken completely over and 100% owned by the State?. In my opinion, it should have happened a long time ago.
@Peter O’Donnell:
Well Peter, I could show up at a parochial house , announce that I worship the devil and would probably be invited in for a cup of tea and a chat. I could show up at the same house and announce that not only was Galileo partly correct but so also was the Pope at that time due to technical details and the door would be shut on me fairly quickly. The point is that an intractable problem exists where some clerics are not entirely spiritual nor are academics close to be scientific in matters where astronomy meshes with terrestrial science. Spiritual matters inform the mind but unfortunately the dull think that spirituality or religion is formed in the mind via convictions.
The taxpayer had the pleasure of picking up the bill to the tune of one and half BILLION while the church paid 10% of that.Great little country Ted.
@Gary Heslin:
The cover-up bill was also paid by the taxpayer.
@Gary Heslin: The state is still supposed to be committed to recouping half of that huge amount from the church. After all, the state bailed out the orders for abuse committed by the past staff of the orders. Even the token amount the orders agreed to pay (and it was a deal that should never have been done, given the huge financial consequences for the Irish people), have still for the most part not been paid. Many of the orders have since put their assets beyond reach in trusts. And incredibly, as a country we continue to give money to these self-same orders to re-build their schools to the tune of millions a school, leading to the infuriating possibility that they may in the future seek to repay their debt to the people through giving us a school building that the state built and paid for! You could not make it up.
The ‘ Palace ‘ for the Bishop, the Cardinals and the Pope, all the Clergy live in Mansions with grand church’s and cathedrals, and the ‘ Vatican Bank ‘ to Impress the Wealthiest among us no less.
The ‘ Lord ‘ from Heaven said: ‘ No two masters can you serve, you will love one and hate the other
God or Riches, which will you serve’ while on earth He was of the ‘ poor ‘ a stable over his head,
No bank, no riches, no mansion, but a shed, the poorest of the poor for them he ‘ Bled ‘!!
The ‘Carpenter ‘ from heaven said : ‘ Follow me ‘, you will have Riches more than the ‘Rich ‘ can see.!!
Looking at the ‘ World ‘ from this ‘ Carpenters ‘ point of view, will ease the heartaches inflected
Through the generations of clerical abuse of Power and Arrogance inflected, hurting , still
Hurting because nothing was ‘ Said ‘!!
The Words of the ‘ Carpenter ‘ from heaven should more often be said, he had empathy
He had feelings for the ‘ Hurt ‘ of this world because he was Born in a Shed and; ‘Had nowhere to lay down his head ‘ his words ring true : ( ‘ No light of a lamp will ever shine in you again, and no voice of a bridegroom and a bride will ever be heard in you again; for your merchants were the Top- ranking men
Of the Earth, and by your Spiritistic practices all the Nations were misled.’ )- Revelation 18:23,
If anyone here feels uncomfortable with ‘scientific facts’, made to feel inferior or bullied into running with the crowd then this is the spiritual side of their nature acting for their benefit but so many capitulate to the voodoo and bluffing that now takes the name of science. Many of the celebrities out there talking wistfully about the celestial arena are merely making things up as they go along in an attempt to draw attention to themselves and little else but the genuine researcher and investigator like Pascal the sense of enjoyment is in themselves and not consensus driven -
“When a natural discourse paints a passion or an effect, one feels
within oneself the truth of what one reads, which was there before,
although one did not know it. Hence one is inclined to love him who
makes us feel it, for he has not shown us his own riches, but ours.
And thus this benefit renders him pleasing to us, besides that such
community of intellect as we have with him necessarily inclines the
heart to love.” Pascal
In short, spirituality is more important to the study of astronomy and terrestrial sciences as no special faculty, such as mathematics, is required . The mathematicians following Newton may wish to have everyone believe that the highest form of learning is mathematics but these same people hardly understand their own agenda.
Gerald, if I understand your point correctly you seem to suggest that spiritual training is more important than a study of science? I certainly have no problem with and would promote the study of all spiritual traditions as part of a curriculum which looked at all that humanity has given thought to and learned about human existence. I don’t believe any scripture holds absolute truth, but they all contain much of the collected wisdom of humanity along with cultural norms, factual inaccuracies and old stories. But you can’t assess a person’s level of spiritual growth any more than you can assess someone’s sincerity in an exam. So education should present information and impart skills in understanding and interpreting that information. It should have nothing to do with “faith formation” , that is up to the parents.
@Noirin Kavanagh:
You got that wrong my dear Noirin so may I gently correct you otherwise it is putting words in my mouth. People become spiritual by the ability to change themselves so a spiritual awakening is nothing more than being able to view the world differently without losing your individuality and because spiritual and inspirational and one and the same thing, more often than not the spiritual person affects those around them in a positive way, not just the social innovators like Fr McVerry or Sister Consilio but all innovators and creative people who feel the spark inherent in their existence.
If people want to share the convictions of the academics of Oxford and Cambridge who think religion is a delusion then they are running with the crowd in the Journal who live by this conviction that science vs religion is basically facts vs myth but there will always be considerate people who are not so hasty to jump on this particular bandwagon.
I wouldn’t get hung up on words but faith is often projected unfairly as convictions however, as many of us are Irish from a rich poetic heritage like the Hebrews, the quality of language and the narratives in all Christian writings including many outside the Bible light up with a spiritual background whereas they remain childish fairytales for those who live in their heads alone.
There is a fine line between education and indoctrination and parts of the education system are severe indoctrination unfortunately and create real hardship for those who think they are deficient in some way when these people have real but unrealized talent.
Gerald, that is one definition of “spirituality” you used, and I don’t have an issue with it but it is arbitrary. Certainly many people have had wonderful insights and left us with that wisdom which has enriched us in uncountable ways. I’m all for that being included in a curriculum and for an ethos of open mindedness and exploration of all ideas to do with how we employ meaning in our existence. But most formalised religions don’t allow for that. They encourage the spiritual journey but box what you are allowed to find at the end of that journey, as well as putting no go areas en route. Dogma, structure, traditions and culture have choked the life out of whatever “spiritual” reality first gave rise to the religion in the first place, if there ever was a spiritual awakening. And we don’t know, because these things are lost in the mists of time and even had we lived in those times who can say if we would know the truth even then? So education needs to impart knowledge and develop the capacity to assess that knowledge and hopefully further it. These are capacities that can be assessed and therefore belong in education. Spirituality is a term which means slightly different things to everyone who uses it and therefore cannot be imparted, developed or assessed in any meaningful way. You offered one definition in what you wrote but I have no doubt that if I had to come up with a definition it would differ, and if we asked a thousand open minded people for a definition we would come up with a thousand different definitions.
have your say