Site of a former state-funded,
Catholic-run mother and baby
home in Tuam, Ireland is seen in
this undated photo. Photo: CNS 
The rhetoric from some members of the Oireachtas should seriously worry us, writes David Mullins
During the course of a recent Dáil debate, Alan Kelly, the leader of the Labour party, suggested that the assets of those religious orders who were involved in the mother and baby homes should be seized in the event that they do not make a sufficient contribution to any compensation or redress scheme.
He was joined in this call by Mick Barry of Solidarity/People Before Profit, with Brid Smith also suggesting that at the very least the assets of the religious orders be frozen “unless they agree to deliver a decent redress”.
Mr Kelly then warned the religious orders that he would personally write the law (“I will draft it myself”) that would enable the State to “take their assets and ensure they make that contribution”.
Those with long enough memories will recall that such political declarations on the part of Deputies Kelly, Barry and Smith amount to little more than the parroting of lines previously used by then Minister for Health Simon Harris in 2017.
Media coverage
In those days Mr Harris received widespread media coverage after he publicly stated that there was “significant merit” to the idea of the Government seizing hospital and school lands owned by the Church as a means of meeting the estimated €1.5 billion cost of sexual abuse redress payments.
Of course – and because this is rarely pointed out – that €1.5 billion was the total cost of the redress scheme for both the State and the religious congregations. The religious orders were never legally obliged to pay €1.5 billion. In fact, since then the religious have paid over hundreds of millions of euro as part of their efforts to meet their half of the total cost and all without recourse to semi-dictatorial seizure policies.
To be clear; there is no suggestion here that those who were treated terribly in mother and baby homes and indeed county homes should not receive redress or compensation. Of course they should. If nothing else there is a clear moral imperative for the religious orders involved and the State to assist these people, as in fact the religious and the recent commission report have accepted.
Instead, the primary question here should be whether the policy, variously supported by Messrs Harris and Kelly et al would actually benefit the former residents or would it hinder them. Would it make accessing compensation or redress an easier or a vastly more complicated and protracted system?
This is particularly important because as Leo Varadkar has previously pointed out, any such asset seizure policy would require a referendum to overcome the property rights enshrined in our constitution. He also thought, by the way, that such a move would fail.
To be precise, his exact words were “I don’t think if we had a referendum on that there would be any chance of it passing”.
Referendum
So, if the referendum option is closed to Mr Kelly and his colleagues, what other options might there be available to them?
Given the language of ‘seize’ and ‘freeze’ it would reasonably appear that legislation similar to that which currently underpins the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) is what is being tacitly suggested.
As CAB itself points out, the powers that it has been invested with emerge from the Proceeds of Crime Act, 1996 to 2016. This legislation allows the bureau to freeze and seize assets which it shows to the High Court are the proceeds of criminal conduct.
Is this what Mr Kelly and his fellow TD’s want? To designate entire religious orders as criminal enterprises. To put them in the same moral and legal categories as the Kinahan and Hutch gangs?
Legally and constitutionally speaking there appears to be nothing in the way of an alternative.
Leaving aside the unprecedented nature of such a move; would dragging the religious orders before the High Court help the former residents or would it almost certainly contribute to depleting whatever assets the orders do have (thus emptying the compensation pot)?
If you think this is far-fetched, and if you think nothing of the sort would enter the minds of our politicians, then perhaps it might be instructive to read what Brid Smith went on to say during that same debate: “We have to treat immediately those graveyards around those homes as crime scenes. They are crime scenes and need to be treated as such. The process of redress also needs to start, not by offering these people enhanced medical cards, but by telling these institutions which have built their wealth on the bones of dead babies, that their assets will be effectively frozen.”
Language
This kind of reckless language is startlingly reminiscent of how very many politicians and commentators have always referred to criminal gangs. That it is now being openly and indiscriminately applied to the religious orders, and by default all the remaining members of them, should cause us all to be profoundly alarmed.
It ignores the enormous, empirically quantifiable level of social good that the religious orders and indeed the wider Catholic Church have contributed to our own society and the advancement of the common good throughout the world.
For example, the Church operates more than 140,000 schools, 10,000 orphanages, 5,000 hospitals and some 16,000 other health clinics. Caritas, the umbrella organisation for Catholic aid agencies, estimates that spending by its affiliates totals between £2 billion (€2.32 billion) and £4 billion (€4.64 billion), making it one of the biggest aid agencies in the world.
As Dr Tom Finegan of Mary Immaculate College has rightly observed: “while this should not mitigate despicable evils perpetrated by its members, a serious assessment of the Church can’t ignore them” either.
That is why when mainstream politicians of Alan Kelly’s standing threaten the religious orders with terms like ‘seize’ and ‘freeze,’ all of us should be concerned. History is full of examples of where such thinking takes us and the harm it ultimately brings about.
