Order refuses to be ‘coerced’ on abuse payments

One of the 18 Catholic religious congregations who ran residential institutions in Ireland where children were abused has said the Orders do not have a moral obligation to pay half of the €1.5bn compensation cost to survivors, writes Sarah Mac Donald.

In a statement posted on their website, the Oblates (Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate) argued that it was the Irish state which framed the redress scheme, not the congregations, and that the Government proceeded with a flawed structure despite warning from the religious congregations about the possible financial cost.

The Oblates were heavily criticised by the 2009 Ryan Report which investigated institutional abuse. They were one of a number of congregations which managed orphanages, industrial schools and reformatories for children.
A report produced by Ireland’s Comptroller and Auditor General recently suggested that the 18 orders concerned had paid about 13 per cent of  total compensation. This spurred government ministers and representatives of former residents to demand that the orders share equally with Government the cost of redress.

The Oblates have paid over €20 million since the publication of the Ryan report. But the order said “the pressure to coerce them [religious congregations] into partnership now that economic circumstances have changed is immoral and should stop.”

Responding to the Oblate statement, Right of Place Second Chance, a charity supporting survivors of institutional abuse said it was “dismayed”. Spokesman Micheál Walsh warned that some of the language used in the statement had the potential to “set survivors back 10 years to a time when their suffering was ill understood and they were telling their stories with the backdrop of denial and refusal”.