Cllr. Éilis Ryan

The Workers’ Party has called for the compulsory confiscation of assets from orders whose institutions contributed to the abuse of women, children and other vulnerable groups in the last century.

Workers’ Party Dublin councillor Éilis Ryan said:

“The time has for the kid gloves and niceties has long passed. The church hierarchy has made clear it has no intention of cooperating in either providing transparency about how its institutions were run in the past, or in compensating its victims adequately now.

“It is more than legitimate to take a more forceful approach, and for the state to confiscate sufficient assets to ensure full, respectful compensation for the victims’ of church-run institutions.”

However, Cllr. Ryan emphasised that the revelations from Tuam and elsewhere warranted more than simply the confiscation of church assets for the purposes of compensating survivors of abuse, saying:

“At the root of the abuses which have been uncovered in recent years lies an abdication by the state of its duty to provide education, healthcare and other basic services to its citizens. Instead, these most basic of rights have been farmed out to the church – a private institution – in a way that is totally inappropriate in a Republic.

“The time has now come for the state to take control of all public schools and hospitals – and as such take full responsibility for providing for its citizens, in a way which has been completely absent since the foundation of our Republic.”