Anne Ferris (Wicklow, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I have already welcomed the job creation initiatives in the Bill; the home renovation scheme, the start-your-own business scheme, the extension of the Living City initiative to the restoration of old buildings in Dublin and the broadening of the eligibility terms for film making tax exemptions will all provide considerable job opportunities for people working in my constituency. I have spoken in great detail about each of these initiatives on another occasion and look forward to monitoring their effects as they become embedded in their respective marketplaces.

Today though I will speak specifically about the Magdalen laundry provision in the Bill. The legislation provides much-needed clarity on the tax status of survivors who were admitted to and worked without pay in 12 named institutions listed in the Bill. Victims in these institutions who are eligible for redress payments finally have confirmation that there will be no obligation under the law for them to pay taxes on their awards. With respect to the adults and children who suffered and continue to suffer, directly or indirectly, I remind the House of the names of the 12 institutions mentioned in the legislation. They are House of Mercy Training School, Wexford; Magdalen Home, Forster Street, Galway; Monastery of Our Lady of Charity, Sean McDermott Street, Dublin; St. Mary’s, Cork Road, Waterford; St. Mary’s, New Ross, County Wexford; St. Mary’s, Pennywell Road, Limerick; St. Mary’s, Sunday’s Well, Cork; St. Mary Magdalen’s, Donnybrook, Dublin 4; St. Mary’s Refuge, High Park, Grace Park Road, Drumcondra, Dublin 9; St. Mary’s Training Centre, Stanhope Street, Dublin 7; St. Patrick’s Refuge, Crofton Road, Dún Laoghaire, County Dublin; and St. Vincent’s, St Mary’s Road, Cork. It is welcome that the Government is continuing to honour its commitments to the victims of these institutions. There remains, however, a significant gap in governance and the legislation on this abuse and other redress schemes for which the State is rightly accepting part liability. As it stands, there is still no commitment to 50:50 payment of redress from these or other religious orders. They are not paying their fair share and if that is allowed to continue, the sad irony is that money paid to the victims will be paid by the innocent children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the victims, with other innocent citizens, through taxes and cuts to public services.

There are high value assets owned by church bodies in Ireland that enjoy charitable tax status and considerable annual State investment in the form of building grants and payments to cover day-to-day running costs. In many cases there is an accounting assumption in the books and accounts of such church-run, State-sponsored facilities that pension deficits for their staff will be funded by the State at some point in the future. There must be some mechanism available to the Government to claw back from religious organisations a fair contribution towards the redress bill, whether through taxation or other means. If there is no such mechanism, I respectfully suggest the Minister give strong consideration to this issue in the next budget.

The damage caused by the scandal of the Magdalen laundries and other church abuse stories is of a scale that matches Ireland’s modern day banking scandal. The financial cost to generations of Irish people of this and other abuse redress schemes, without fair contribution from the church, will certainly exceed €1.5 billion. This House has agreed that the banking scandal will be the subject of an inquiry. The church scandals also need separate public inquiries, with witnesses from the State and church organisations being called to give evidence. If there is an expectation that the people will suffer an unfair share of the cost of these redress schemes, the people are entitled to know why.

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