Child Abuse
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THE full details and values of the properties handed over by the Catholic Church in the €128m deal to compensate abuse victims was revealed for the first time yesterday.
The Irish Independent has learned the Church has already handed over several school properties to the state, including Terenure Secondary School in Dublin (worth €4.5m) and the Scoil Mhuire secondary school in Ennistymon, Co Clare (worth €980,000).
The most valuable include a three-acre site at Merrion in Dublin 4 worth €8.9m, two sites worth €3m in Tuam, Co Galway, and the former St Anne's Secondary School in Milltown in Dublin (worth €2.6m).
One of the transferred properties includes the Goldenbridge group home in Inchicore in Dublin, which was previously at the centre of child abuse claims. The religious orders have also handed over houses to the HSE to be used for counselling and therapy services, as well as several sites for new schools.
Since the end of the economic boom, commercial property values have fallen by 35pc and suspicions have grown that the state has been left with church properties which are now worth a lot less.
But according to a property expert who has examined some of the biggest transactions, the state has gotten good value.
Dramatically
He pointed out that the properties were valued in 2002 and would have increased dramatically in value right up until the beginnings of the property market crash in early 2007.
Although there has been a steep fall in commercial property values since, he believes that the former church properties are still worth far more than their 2002 valuations.
Until now, the church-state indemnity deal has been shrouded in secrecy, with the values of the individual properties handed over kept under wraps for years.
The Department of Education provided a basic list to Labour TD Ruairi Quinn and supplied further information following queries from the Irish Independent.
The biggest deal was the handover of a three-acre site on the grounds of the former St Mary's Asylum for the Female Blind on the Merrion Road, Dublin, to Dublin City Council. It was valued at €8.9m and property experts say that an adjacent 14 acres owned by the Sisters of Charity were sold to the private sector for €45m in 2001. This equated to an average price of €3.2m per acre, compared to the €2.96m per acre price for the land handed over to the state.
The reluctance of property experts to comment publicly on the church/state deal is due to the fact that many of them earn substantial revenues from the sale of church property.
Back in 2002, many religious orders were facing potential bankruptcy due to the prospect of legal action from former residents of the orphanages and schools in which abuse took place.
Former Education Minister Michael Woods agreed to cap the church's liability at €128m in the expectation that the final bill would be around €500m and in recognition of the state's own negligence. But with more than 14,000 claims for compensation, the overall bill is expected to top €1.1bn, which means the State will pay 90pc of the cost.
In total, the church has committed to handing over €66m worth of properties, €52m in cash and €10m in counselling services under the €128m indemnity deal. But just 21 properties out of a total of 64 have been given to the State so far.
Education Minister Batt O'Keeffe said that it was "regrettable" that the final transfer of the remaining 43 properties had not been completed.
"However, I am anxious to point out that in the vast majority of the properties, good and marketable title has been fully established or the properties have been physically transferred to and are in possession of the State or third parties," he said.
Today's remarkable report concerning Church property is a timely reminder of a decidedly dodgy deal done in 2002 without the imprimatur of its main player, the taxpayer. It is time to be indignant all over again.
Religious orders were facing massive compensatory claims from former residents of institutions in which abuse of children had been rife.
In an extraordinarily generous, or perhaps naïve deal, the then Education Minister Michael Woods agreed to cap the Catholic Church's liability at €128m, consisting of €66m worth of property to be handed over to the State, plus cash and services. The State would pay the balance of the compensation, then anticipated to be about €500m. In fact, the claims have exceeded one billion euro.
Moreover, just 21 of the 64 original properties have been handed over by the Church.
The reason for this appears to be the arcane records of some properties, coupled with the State's rejection of some offerings which were not considered up to standard. Nevertheless, the process initiated by Mr Woods, with the approval of then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, is proving painfully slow.
On the plus side, despite the intervening downturn, the properties in question have not lost value since the deal was done in 2002.
In the circumstances, and bearing in mind the actions which made the deal necessary in the first place, the suggestion from the Labour Education spokesman, Ruairi Quinn, that schools owned by the Church be now handed over to the State appears eminently sensible and just.