DUBLIN, Ireland - The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland has agreed to a landmark $110 million payment to Irish children sexually abused by its clergy over decades. Sex abuse campaigners and opposition lawmakers brand the offer as inadequate.
The deal late Wednesday was designed to conclude a 10-year struggle by the church in this predominantly Catholic nation to overcome sex scandals going back to the 1940s. More than 20 priests, brothers and nuns have already been convicted of molesting children, with much of the abuse taking place in state-funded, church-run schools.
The stream of accusations also has exposed both the government and church to potentially gargantuan legal bills from victims' lawsuits.
In exchange for the church's financial commitment, the government agreed to indemnify the church against further legal action by victims in Ireland.
"I think the religious orders have been extremely generous in the way that they have responded," said Bishop Eamonn Walsh of the Catholic Bishops' Child Protection Committee. "This is putting their money where their mouth is, and I think they should be congratulated. It must have put extreme strain on their resources."
But sex abuse campaigners and opposition lawmakers said total claims by an estimated 3,000 victims to a new government-run compensation fund could exceed $350 million. That means taxpayers would cover most of the tab, they said.
The church's offer includes $32 million in cash, about $70 million in property to be donated to the state and $8 million to fund counseling services for sex-abuse victims.
Crucially, any victim who accepts money from the fund must agree to drop legal action against the church or state.
"The church has gotten away very cheaply," said John Kelly, spokesman for a lobbying group called Survivors of Child Abuse. "The taxpayer should not pick up the bill for abuse committed by members of the religious orders."
Education Minister Michael Woods, who oversaw negotiations with church authorities, said successive governments must share the blame for allowing cases of individual or systematic sexual abuse in certain Catholic-run schools to go unpunished for decades.
Governments, he said, had been "responsible for placing the children in the institutions involved."
Roisin Shortall, spokeswoman on children's issues for the opposition Labor Party, questioned the church's commitment to funding counseling services.
"It is patently obvious that any counseling service that would have a connection with a religious institution would present huge problems for any victims of abuse," she said.
The 1990s saw the stature of the Catholic hierarchy in Ireland plummet under the weight of scandal, starting in 1992, when Bishop Eamonn Casey was exposed as having an illegitimate son in the United States whom he had secretly supported from church coffers. Casey fled the country for South America.
Within a few years, Irish people were recalling Casey's demise almost fondly as much darker revelations of pedophilia within the clergy were exposed case by case.
In 1994, one Irish government collapsed over allegations that it suppressed the extradition of a priest, Brendan Smyth, to neighboring Northern Ireland to face charges of molesting and raping former altar boys.
Smyth eventually was convicted in courts in both parts of Ireland of abusing more than 30 children as far back as 1958. Church leaders admitted they had long known about some complaints but chose to transfer Smyth to new parishes rather than hand him over to police.
Smyth's case broke the taboo against seeking criminal prosecutions of priests, and the trickle of complaints turned into a tide.
The court cases are cited as one factor fueling a steady decline in Mass attendance in this country of 3.8 million people, more than 90 percent of whom are baptized Catholics.