Rónán Mullen (Independent)

If that is still the case then the provision undermines all of the Government's pretensions to goodwill on this issue. Either the Bill cares for people who have suffered or it does not. It may not be fashionable to say the following but among the people who have made the case most strongly to the Minister are some of the religious orders who have contributed to the fund. They have sought to have greater responsibility placed on the members of the statutory fund to seek out beneficiaries. They believe that beneficiaries should include persons who are former residents of the institutions.

There are two issues here. First, what people who have suffered abuse over the years deserve. Second, how the State should interact with other players, particularly the religious orders, around apportioning responsibility retrospective for costs. I do not see how the Minister can have any moral authority by calling on religious orders to contribute any percentage of the funds if he does not see that it is fundamentally unjust to exclude people who did not come under the remit of the old redress scheme, not least when one considers the fact that many people were out of the jurisdiction. We all know that people, for various reasons, times and place, are not in a position to seek the help that is available. Perhaps he will give me a good and humane reason for the exclusion.

I admire the Minister's intellect and determination to deal with the issue even though I do not always agree with him. I am open to hearing a good explanation from him. If the legislation is about bean counting, bureaucracy and the State covering its ass then there is no excuse for it. There can be no moral authority behind such a position. In that context it renders somewhat fraudulent, to say the lest, any portrayal of the issue. The Government holds all of the PR cards over and against the religious orders who, as we all know, are very poor at playing the PR game. Fair is always fair. I do not believe and would discourage the religious orders from buying into the notion that they have 50% financial responsibility. The history of the issue is that the State quite rightly wanted to put redress in place in order to prevent people from having to go through courts and experience difficult adversarial processes which would be even more hurtful to them. By doing that it opened up the State to a degree of risk because when the probative burden comes down a greater risk is created. Everybody agreed, as a matter of societal justice, that it should happen. It was in that context that the State approached religious orders to contribute but the State did not have a clear handle on how much the matter would eventually cost. The religious orders did want in, for good and pragmatic reasons, and were afforded certain protections for joining the redress scheme. The State, even in these times of tremendous difficulty, has much less finite resources than individual religious orders who have varying levels of commitments and one cannot compare the two. Those commitments involve not just looking after their older members, but ongoing pastoral care and they do so much good work in the State even now. The Minister and the Government have made passing reference to that from time to time.

There is a tendency here to shift a moral responsibility onto the religious orders without being open to a proper assessment of all of the religious orders and their members and the vast majority of good ones have contributed over the years. If the Minister were to put a value on that then he might change his tune about the 50:50 sharing of cost. There is a fundamental dishonesty underlying the issue and that in no way undermines the cause of redress. For example, the Christian Brothers will put in another €30 million or €10 million in cash over a period. The organisation has already given the Minister a cheque for €4 million. To be honest, if the holes that I think are in the Bill exist then I would encourage the order to stop its cheque until changes are made. The only reason that I would not encourage the orders to do it would be because I would not like to see a delay, even by one day, in the help and assistance that is people's due. It is entirely wrong to mix the issue with the divestment of properties in the context of education. That serves another agenda and does nothing to assist the cause of people who deserve redress. That is all about the State working out its particular agenda on education. It is wrong to mix those issues and I have said so to the Minister before. The Minister and I addressed Jesuit boards a number of years ago and I warned him then.