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	The Wages of Sin Sunday Business Post May 31, 2009 http://www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqt=NEWS+FEATURES-qqqm=nav-qqqid=41967-qqqx=1.asp The agreement between the religious orders and the state on who should foot the bill to compensate victims of abuse in religious run, state-funded institutions came about as a result of then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern's apology to the victims in 1999. That apology, in turn, was a result of campaigning by victims, and growing public awareness of their stories, culminating in the States of Fear television programmes broadcast by RTE. In November 2000, the religious orders' representatives met the state to discuss a compensation scheme for victims and a mechanism for funding it. The state team comprised officials from the Department of Education, the attorney general's office and the Department of Finance. However, the two sides could not agree a deal on funding. The attorney general's office advised against the blanket indemnity sought by the religious orders, and the Department of Finance was worried about the potential cost. The negotiations were at a stalemate. In late 2001 and early 2002, the then education minister, Michael Woods, and his secretary general, John Dennehy, met the representatives of the orders without the finance and AG officials. The deadlock was broken and a deal was agreed in principle, to be signed later. The general parameters of the deal were as follows. The orders would make a contribution of €128million, comprised of cash and property transfers, some of which had already taken place. In return, the state would afford the orders complete indemnity against civil suits in the courts. In other words, if a victim of clerical abuse in one of the institutions sued for compensation and won, the state would pay the bill. Several such cases have occurred. In one, the High Court ruled that the religious order was solely liable in law for the abuse - contradicting the state's contention that it bore some legal (as opposed to moral) liability for the abuse. More importantly, the state would meet the total cost of a compensation scheme for victims. It was this open-ended nature of the state's liability that alarmed people when they became aware of the deal. A month after he agreed the deal with the orders, Woods attended a Dáil committee meeting - which he initially sought to have held in private - at which he conceded that he had no idea how much the final bill would be. But he insisted that the orders' contribution be capped. "This is a useless conversation," he told deputies. "It is a question of slagging the religious." On June 5, 2002 - less than 24 hours before Woods left ministerial office for the last time - the legally-binding agreement with the religious orders was signed. The €128 million figure was arrived at because the state side and religious agreed that it might represent a 50/50 split of the costs. But the two sides were being completely unrealistic about the potential costs. This newspaper and others warned, before the deal was signed, that the eventual liability could be upwards of €1 billion. Crucially, the religious contribution was capped; the state's liability wasn't. If the state thought that it would soon receive millions of euro-worth of property from the religious orders, it was gravely mistaken. Originally, the property contribution was supposed to amount to €80 million; that has since been amended to €66 million. But, seven years after the deal was signed, the transfer of the property portfolio is not yet nearly complete. Many details of the properties, and many of their valuations, remain secret. Last week, the Department of Education released a list of 63 properties which have been transferred, or are being transferred, from the religious orders to the state or to charity/ community organisations. "Good and marketable title" has only been established on 20 of them. An examination of the list of properties shows that, whatever the state has got out of the deal, it certainly isn't €66 million-worth of property. Instead, a series of health, community and educational facilities have been transferred (or are awaiting transfer) either to the state or to charities. Many of these properties had previously been maintained, funded and staffed by state bodies. In fact, the state realised little financial value from many of the transactions. Most of the properties were transferred to either the Health Service Executive (HSE) or the Department of Education, with a number of charities such as the Alzheimer Society, the Irish Wheelchair Association and the St Vincent de Paul also appearing as beneficiaries. In several cases, the properties transferred are school buildings, which have been maintained by the state for many years. In other cases, the lands are described as "lands/ site". However, a closer inspection shows at least some of these to be playing pitches - such as those adjacent to the Sisters of Mercy schools in Carna, Co Galway, and Doon, Co Limerick. Several other properties, including those at Moate, Glenamaddy, Enniscorthy and others, are existing schools. In many of these cases, nothing has changed since the transfer of the nominal title to the land. The Department of Education has confirmed that the management and governance of the schools remains a matter for the "patron body" - in other words, the religious orders. Despite themillions of euros that this exercise has cost the state on paper, it is very difficult to see any real benefit. While formal title has, in many cases, passed from the religious orders to the state, the actual property is marketable in very few cases. There has been no inflow of funds to the state coffers from the property portfolio. An investigation by The Sunday Business Post last year uncovered more detail for the 26 properties transferred to the health boards. Examination of these "transactions" raises even more questions than for the schools transferred. In several cases, the agreed "price" of an individual property was considerably greater than the valuation submitted by the religious order. In other words, the religious orders submitted a property as part of the list and put a value on it. However, instead of bargaining the "price" down, the state bargained the "price" upwards, valuing the property at more than the religious orders actually sought. At the time, the HSE said that this discrepancy was because of a rising property market. However, at the time that the deal was agreed, the state specifically insisted that the religious orders should not be able to delay individual transfers to piggy-back on a rising property market. This inflation has occurred in every case for which the details are available. In one case - St Colemans, Rushbrook, Cobh, Co Cork (a former industrial school for girls) - the state settled for a valuation that was 40 per cent higher than the original valuation submitted by the religious order. Many properties were bequeathed to the religious orders on the basis that they should be used for educational or healthcare purposes. These "restrictive covenants" greatly restrict the value of the properties - just transferring some of these properties to the state is not as simple as it might seem. There are other curiosities about the properties transferred to the HSE. Many of the valuations are very similar: 13 of the 26 properties that The Sunday Business Post identified are valued at between €200,000 and €300,000, and three properties are given valuations of €250,000. Two are over €4million, and another two are over €1 million. All the rest are under €1 million. The total value of the 26 properties transferred to the HSE is €18.5 million - the only ones for which valuations are available - with an average valuation of just over €700,000. The Department of Education was unwilling to supply any more detail about the valuations of other properties last week. In 2006, while being questioned by Labour leader Pat Rabbitte, former taoiseach Bertie Ahern told the Dáil: "He believes I should have taken the money from the Church, but I do not. I do not believe the Church should have coughed up another €500 million . . . I accept Deputy Rabbitte's view and he should accept mine. The Irish Church does not have those resources. I was not prepared to go down that road, nor am I prepared to do so now." Later, Ahern added: "I do not believe for a second that we should have taken anymore money from the religious institutions in the state. That is my position." The former taoiseach no doubt believed that the orders were nearly impoverished. But his view fails to take account of the extraordinary liquidation of the orders' property assets that has taken place in the last decade and a half. Property sources estimate that religious orders have sold property worth hundreds of millions of euros on the open market. Faced with declining numbers and the rising cost of care for their ageing members, orders have been cashing in on their landholdings - some of which were located in the most expensive areas of the country. Large tracts of land in Dublin especially have been sold off for private development - some of it for the most exclusive residential schemes. Not all of the lands sold have been owned by the 19 orders which took part in the deal. But many have and, because of the charitable status of many orders, they have been exempt from tax. Shortly after the deal had been concluded, in an interview with The Sunday Business Post, Sister Elizabeth Maxwell of Cori, the religious orders' umbrella body, told this newspaper that the government was "getting very good value" from the deal. "All our legal advice is that the government has done well by getting so much from us," she said. "We've been very generous."
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