Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

God almighty, if ever there were an argument for separation of church and State, we really have it here. That the Christian Brothers can do this to school students to pay a debt for the crimes they committed against previous generations of school students and the Minister says there is nothing he can do is pathetic. The Minister has not answered the question why he could not put a compulsory purchase order on the land. He should request the local authority to do so in order to secure the land. As I said to the Minister, of course the Christian Brothers should pay their debts for historic child abuse, and the school understands that, but they do not need to sell €18 million worth of land in order to pay an €8 million debt they owe in their "voluntary pledge" over historic child abuse. They have vast amounts of land and assets all over the country, so why is it acceptable for them to flog off this land for €18 million to a private developer and rob this school of all its pitches and why do we just stand by while they do so and say there is nothing we can do? They do not need to sell that much land to pay their debt to the redress scheme.

See this speech in context