Drop in payments to clerical sex abuse survivors

The amount of money paid to survivors of clerical sex abuse has fallen dramatically in the past year, according to the Killaloe Diocesan Accounts 2011 published this week.
The payments dropped by nearly 90% last year to €20,748 from €195,799 in 2010. The diocesan communications officer Fr Brendan Quinlivan put the drop down to a decrease in the number of people requesting money from the fund.
The accounts also showed a specific contribution by one donor of €200,000 in 2011 “to alleviate diocesan debt” and an accumulated bequest of over €1 million from one estate.
The payments arising from clerical sex abuse are listed as special payments in the diocesan accounts. These are paid for from a fund called the Bishop’s House Donation accumulated from the sale of land beside the bishop’s house in Ennis. 
“These payments are down so much because the requests of assistance from this fund have gone down. That is fundamentally the reason behind this decrease.
“All of the cases of people seeking assistance with healing as a result of clerical sex abuse of children or adults have been historical in that they relate to the past and the diocese has made every effort to help people to heal through counselling or education, things that would help them to rebuild their lives after the trauma they have suffered.
“The vast majority of the cases are historical and the diocese, through the child protection committee, have been working with survivors to put in place barriers to prevent this happening in the future through training and awareness and as time goes on the demands on that account are not what they would have been in the past,” Fr Quinlivan outlined.
The diocese emerged from 2011 with a net surplus of €220,334. Bishop Kieran O’Reilly thanked all who contributed to the financial support of the Diocese of Killaloe for their continued generosity in difficult economic times. The Bishop’s remarks accompanied the publication of the Killaloe Diocesan Accounts for 2011.
The accounts showed a ‘specific legacy’ last year of €468,074 that must not be used for the day-to-day running for the diocese. Overall this deceased person left €1,048,989 to the diocese for “education to priesthood”.
“The reason this bequest was not all in one payment was probably because the estate was being wound up over a period of time so the money came in in different periods. We were surprised by the amount of this bequest as we had thought it would be in the region of €750,000,” Fr Quinlivan outlined.
Other bequests and donations added up to more than €150,000, a massive jump on the 2010 figure of less than €10,000.
A specific donation of €200,000 was given a person “to alleviate the diocesan debt from the deficit that appeared in the accounts in recent years. We had been running at a deficit because of the diocesan loan. The loan was largely for the refurbishment of St Flannan’s College,” the communications officer explained.
Priests of the diocese continued making voluntary contributions to the diocese last year ranging from €1,000 to €3,000. The priests contributed €131,312 from their personal finances last year with priests’ basic salaries varying from €22,000 to €27,240 depending on years of service. This was down from €171,885 in 2010.

“In previous years we had a lot of investments in banks and so on and a lot of the diocesan day-to-day expenses were being met by investments made years ago. The income from those investments has collapsed in recent years.  So about four years ago Bishop Willie Walsh asked the priests of the diocese if they would contribute to the running of the diocese and the diocesan office. They were invited to make a contribution of between €1,000 and €3,000 each for a period of three years. Some gave more than that but I understand the lowest amount given was €1,000. Those three years ended last year but the priests themselves, seeing as the situation hadn’t changed greatly, offered to continue contributing to that fund,” explained Fr Quinlivan.
Separate to the parish collections, the people in the diocese of Killaloe, which covers much of Clare and parts of North Tipperary and South Offaly, gave more than €258,000 to the Trócaire Lenten Campaign last year, down more than €22,000 on the previous year.
The Mission Sunday collection last year added up to more than €73,700 and the Trócaire East Africa Famine Relief collection added up to just short of €250,000.
The fixed assets on the diocese’s balance sheet are valued at more than €900,000 while the current assets include cash in the bank of more than €800,000, a fund for vocations at more than €1 million and investments of more than €2.166 million adding up to €5,403,930. The current liabilities are valued at €5.916 million and include a bank loan of more than €2.34 million and parish loans of €1,583,000. This leaves net current assets of just over €500,000 and net assets of €404,314, down more than €75,000 on 2010.