How much would it cost ?

Stealthfins

There's a lot of people unhappy with how religion is intertwined with a lot of aspects of Irish society.

Such as education,law and government bodies.

Some don't care because it doesn't bother them.

Anyhow,would it be costly to erase all the religious paraphernalia and print and rewrite everything and change laws etc.

Or should there be a vote on it or have some sort of referendum.

Atheist Ireland seem to be the only body that I know of who seem to be trying to make a change,correct me if I'm wrong...

Michael OBrien

Stealthfins wrote: »

There's a lot of people unhappy with how religion is intertwined with a lot of aspects of Irish society.

Such as education,law and government bodies.

Some don't care because it doesn't bother them.

Anyhow,would it be costly to erase all the religious paraphernalia and print and rewrite everything and change laws etc.

Or should there be a vote on it or have some sort of referendum.

Atheist Ireland seem to be the only body that I know of who seem to be trying to make a change,correct me if I'm wrong...

There needs to be a lot more education before any 'vote' on something so wide ranging would have any value. A slow progress towards greater awareness of the problems with the current setup seems the best approach.

Most people don't think about these issues at all, until it strikes home in some personal way. Ireland has improved dramatically in its attitudes, but has a long way to go.

recedite

If you compare this issue to the issue of same sex marriage, then it is apparent that a short sharp referendum was a better way of resolving that issue than endless talking and endless meaningless minor changes in the rules and terminology.

In 2014 there was a Constitutional Convention, and the general public submitted proposals for constitutional change. A large number of submissions called for the Separation of Church and State. The convention largely ignored these submissions, but did recommend a referendum to repeal the Blasphemy law.

It also recommended that a referendum be held on some of the other issues that cropped up, including SSM, minimum age of a presidential candidate, and Seanad reform. The final report is here.

In hindsight now, although some referendums were held, it seems that all issues involving religion/secularism were firmly kicked to touch. Even the Blasphemy referendum was abandoned.

How much does it cost to change something? Well the presidential age referendum cost €7.5M which I would agree was a complete waste of money. On the other hand, a referendum to resolve an important social issue, such as SSM or Separation of Church and State, would be a bargain at the same price.

Following the referendum, I don't think there would be any additional costs. We are already paying the salaries of the TD's and civil servants who would draft the legislation.

Peregrinus

Stealthfins wrote: »

Anyhow,would it be costly to erase all the religious paraphernalia and print and rewrite everything and change laws etc.

Or should there be a vote on it or have some sort of referendum.

It depends on what you mean by "erase all the religious paraphernalia".

If you just want to, e.g., remove all the religious language from laws, yes, you'd need a referendum (to amend the Constitution to remove religious language) and you need to find parliamentary time (to amend any Act of the Oireachtas which contained religious language) and administrative time (to amend any regulations, statutory instruments, etc). The referendum would be expensive. The cost of the time of lawyers and civil servants to review the body of legislation and draft amendments wouldn't be trivial, but it wouldn't break the bank. Many of these people are already employed in the public service, and the main issue would not be paying their salaries; it would be diverting them from other work. The actual printing costs would be comparatively modest.

But if you mean, e.g, that the state shouldn't be funding religiously-established schools, hospitals, care homes, social service institutions, etc, the cost of the transition would be huge. On the assumption that we still want the sick to be treated and children to be educated, the state would either have to buy the schools, hospitals etc and run them itself, or build new ones. And it would need to set up and staff state agencies to do work that currently is done by voluntary agencies that is funded by the state. All this would be a pretty expensive proposition, though I don't know if anybody has attempted to price it.

magicbastarder

Peregrinus wrote: »

On the assumption that we still want the sick to be treated and children to be educated, the state would either have to buy the schools, hospitals etc and run them itself, or build new ones. And it would need to set up and staff state agencies to do work that currently is done by voluntary agencies that is funded by the state. All this would be a pretty expensive proposition, though I don't know if anybody has attempted to price it.

well, the idea of building new schools and hospitals to take over from the existing ones would be a non-runner obviously, as it would be the greatest waste of resources the state has yet seen. unless of course, the requirement for schools and hospitals doubles in the period.

thinking about it, it'd be no bad thing for waiting lists.

Peregrinus

magicbastarder wrote: »

well, the idea of building new schools and hospitals to take over from the existing ones would be a non-runner obviously, as it would be the greatest waste of resources the state has yet seen . . .

Yes, but if you don't build new schools, hospitals, etc, then you have to buy the existing ones, to ensure that they are no longer owned/controlled/connected with the church (assuming that's the outcome you want).

Buying the existing ones might cost less than building new ones, but it's still going to cost a bunch of money - money that would end up in the very deep trouser pockets of the church, which is possibly not an outcome you would think good.

magicbastarder

well, that does play into the whole debate about the redress bill, but that'd be a bit OT.

the issue is not primarily cost, it's political will. it's still an issue which will please half of the constituents and probably annoy the other half, and most irish politicians are not the type to do something unless they know it enjoys overwhelming support.

What do you mean by paraphernalia?
Churches, graveyards etc?

magicbastarder

he mentioned education, law and government bodies.

recedite

I'm pretty sure that if the state stopped paying the salaries of all the staff at religious owned schools and hospitals, the buildings would come up for sale soon afterwards.
Anyone for a second-hand hospital, going cheap?
Given the lack of other buyers, and the money still owed for redress of abuse cases, I'm sure some deal could be done to ensure a smooth changeover of the deeds at little or no cost to the state.

magicbastarder

recedite wrote: »

I'm pretty sure that if the state stopped paying the salaries of all the staff at religious owned schools and hospitals, the buildings would come up for sale soon afterwards.
Anyone for a second-hand hospital, going cheap?

you'd kill two birds with one stone too - think of the falloff in pensions you'd have to pay, and all the places in nursing homes. plus, the funeral directors would have a field day.

Peregrinus

recedite wrote: »

I'm pretty sure that if the state stopped paying the salaries of all the staff at religious owned schools and hospitals, the buildings would come up for sale soon afterwards.
Anyone for a second-hand hospital, going cheap?

Yes, they would. But even a second-hand hospital, going cheap, costs quite a lot of money. And if you need to buy them all at the same time, that's quite a hit on the budgetary bottom line.

And what you end up with, after shelling out all that money, is the same hospitals treating the same patients with the same staff and the same facilities. In terms of changing or improving medical services, nothing has been acheived. All you have done is to transfer a significant chunk of taxpayer funds into the trouser pockets of bishops.

Which, you know, if that's your policy objective, you'll be fine with. It's just that I doubt that is the OP's policy objective.

recedite wrote: »

Given the lack of other buyers, and the money still owed for redress of abuse cases, I'm sure some deal could be done to ensure a smooth changeover of the deeds at little or no cost to the state.

Lack of other buyers? Seriously? Have you any idea what the site value alone of St Vincent's Hospital would be? Or the Mater?

As for the redress bill, magicbastarder suggests that that's off-topic and, to a large extent, it is. There'll be some overlap between religious orders owing money under the redress scheme and owners of schools, hospitals, etc, but not a huge one. Most of the schools and hospitals that you would need to acquire will be owned by institutions that have no redress liability. so there isn't really scope for a deal to hand them over in exchange for a write-down of the liability. So the redress issue might help to smooth the transfer of some properties but, mostly, it'll be irrelevant.

On reflection, if you really wanted to do this, it's not practicable to think of the state acquiring all the hospitals, etc, involved - the sums of money are just too large - but you might be able to do it by bringing in private capital. Essentially, the state announces that it won't contract for public services with religious agencies, but it will contract with secular agencies. The religious agencies can then sell their hospitals, etc, to secular agencies which will accept state funding to provide healthcare, etc. (To some extent this has happened already, where declining religious orders have sold, e.g., private hospitals to secular healthcare companies.)

There's a number of problems, though. The first is that a public tendering system for the award of healthcare contracts, etc, which discriminated on the basis of religion might be constitutionally objectionable. The second is that the economics of the thing would have to be set up so that the non-religious agencies could make profits out of running the hospitals, and distribute the profits to their shareholders. (Otherwise the deal wouldn't be attractive to them; why would they buy the hospitals, if they can't profit from running them?) This means, all other things being equal, that the cost to the State of
providing healthcare services would go up. Still, that might a price the OP feels is worth paying.

Absolam

recedite wrote: »

I'm pretty sure that if the state stopped paying the salaries of all the staff at religious owned schools and hospitals, the buildings would come up for sale soon afterwards. Anyone for a second-hand hospital, going cheap? Given the lack of other buyers, and the money still owed for redress of abuse cases, I'm sure some deal could be done to ensure a smooth changeover of the deeds at little or no cost to the state.

I'm pretty sure that wouldn't be the case at all. Whilst the legal battles were only beginning over the various breaches of contract that would be required to withdraw all that funding there'd be an entire country feeling ever so slightly disgruntled about the sudden lack of hospitals and schools. A lack of political will doesn't even being to describe the number of politicians who don't feel quite that suicidal. Meanwhile, from a property owners point of view, well if I were someone with a property that I knew the State needed desperately in order to restore some semblance of health services, I don't think I'd feel the need to offload it in a hurry. After all, it's not like I'm losing out by having it lie idle.... and I might be better off selling it for apartments anyway.

recedite

The above arguments all centre on the Church's ability to hold the state to ransom. But what you have to remember is that the state is sovereign, which means it gets to write the laws. It can simply write a law to say that no currently functioning publicly funded school or hospital can be closed for the purposes of a private sale. The justification for this is the fact that so much public money has been put into the buildings and facilities over the years, despite the property deeds still remaining in private hands.

The Church knows very well that its ability to control public facilities depends on its ability to influence politicians. And the problem for the state is that too many politicians are under that malign influence. The Michael Woods indemnity deal whereby the state took over an unnecessary Redress burden from the Church being a case in point.

While serving as Minister for Education, Woods signed a controversial agreement with 18 Irish religious orders involved in child sex-abuse scandals which limited their compensation liability to the victims of abuse to only €128 million. This compensation scheme is projected to eventually cost the Irish government €1.35 billion. The agreement was signed just before the 2002 general election, and consequently was not laid before the cabinet for its approval. It then remained unpublished for several months.
In 2003, after brokering the deal, Woods claimed his strong Catholic faith made him the most suitable person to negotiate the deal. He also denied allegations that he was a member of Opus Dei or the Knights of Saint Columbanus after the group Survivors of Child Abuse alleged he was a member of the former.

magicbastarder

Stealthfins wrote: »

Anyhow,would it be costly to erase all the religious paraphernalia and print and rewrite everything and change laws etc.

just a stab in the dark - but i'd guess €13bn?

Orion

recedite wrote: »

I'm pretty sure that if the state stopped paying the salaries of all the staff at religious owned schools and hospitals, the buildings would come up for sale soon afterwards.

Don't need to do that. We just need to amend the Equal Status and Employment Equality Acts to remove their exemption which allows them to discriminate on the basis of religion. Then enforce other existing laws which don't allow them to force their own religious ethos on others. Then we've got an actual public hospital.

recedite

I'd still prefer to see the deeds handed over to the state. If the state is constantly spending public money to build extensions and upgrade the facilities, it is not acceptable that the religious owner could suddenly put the facility up for sale as a demolition site for apartments or whatever. Or threaten to do that.

Take this example. Nuns threaten to close a school and sell it.
Dept. of Education then forced to buy back a building which was substantially built and fitted out with public money, but is located on private land. The price was not disclosed.
Nuns pocket the money and head off into the sunset.
The school continues to be run under RC "patronage" or control, the same as before.
I'm amazed that Stephen Donnelly TD apparently thinks he has "done the state some service" by acting as a facilitator in this.

Orion

I'm not disagreeing with you but it would be money we don't have. Holles St moving to Vincents is another example. Vincents want to enforce Catholic ethos on the National Maternity Hospital. Religious ethos should be taken out of state funded services and that can be done by legislation.

recedite

Whoah... here's €13 Billion dropping like ripe apples from a tree. Its a sign from God that we need to sort out this issue once and for all, using this manna from heaven

Absolam

recedite wrote: »

The above arguments all centre on the Church's ability to hold the state to ransom.

Hang on... if the State removes all funding from an institution in order to bully it into handing over it's property at a discount to the State and the institution decides to do something else instead, the institution is holding the State to ransom? Wow!

recedite wrote: »

But what you have to remember is that the state is sovereign, which means it gets to write the laws.

Well... no. Ireland is a sovereign State, but the nation (being the people) is sovereign, not the State. You can tell by the fact that the Constitution can only be amended by plebiscite, and the State cannot pass laws repugnant to that Constitution.

recedite wrote: »

It can simply write a law to say that no currently functioning publicly funded school or hospital can be closed for the purposes of a private sale. The justification for this is the fact that so much public money has been put into the buildings and facilities over the years, despite the property deeds still remaining in private hands.

I imagine many tenants would love that justification, but no tenant acquires rights over someone elses property by virtue of what they spend whilst occupying it. You might need to amend your law to include non functioning schools and hospitals, since they wouldn't be functioning after the State took away all their funding, remember? Though such a law would obviously be repugnant to the Constitution, so that's a bit of a problem there. This is all sounding very very familiar; the thing is the State simply can't go round taking everybody's stuff just because you don't like that they have it, even if it wants to (and there is no reason to think it does). It has to act within the law, which is limited by the Constitution (and don't forget your principle of coming into equity with clean hands).

recedite wrote: »

The Church knows very well that its ability to control public facilities depends on its ability to influence politicians. And the problem for the state is that too many politicians are under that malign influence. The Michael Woods indemnity deal whereby the state took over an unnecessary Redress burden from the Church being a case in point.

Well, it probably knows very well that it's ability to control it's own facilities depend on the fact that, not to put to fine a point on it, it owns them.

Absolam

recedite wrote: »

Whoah... here's €13 Billion dropping like ripe apples from a tree. Its a sign from God that we need to sort out this issue once and for all, using this manna from heaven

Well, if we end up with the money it would definitely make long term sense to invest it in education, since we're likely to need to send more people overseas for jobs, and the public health service, since less people here will have private health care. Whether owning buildings is more desirable that providing better services is something people might argue about though.

Peregrinus

recedite wrote: »

Whoah... here's €13 Billion dropping like ripe apples from a tree. Its a sign from God that we need to sort out this issue once and for all, using this manna from heaven

Let me get this straight; you want the state to pay the €13 billion to the church in order to buy schools, hospitals, care homes and the like?

recedite

I think the state should pay something to buy the deeds of all publicly funded schools and hospitals. But the price can be minimised by a combination of different strategies. By offsetting some properties against outstanding redress payments. By refusing to continue to pay teacher salaries in the schools that held out for a high price. By refusing to sink any more public money into renovations, extensions, and extra facilities for any privately owned schools and hospitals.
Use whatever legal means possible to prevent publicly funded facilities being scrapped by private owners, whether by CPO, or a law to prevent them ever being sold, or a public policy never to give alternative planning permission. Any of these would devalue the properties.

As a comparison, there was a guy who bought up a park, Dartmouth Square in Dublin, a property that would have been worth many millions as a development site. But in the end, he found he could do nothing with it except sell it into public ownership for a modest sum.

Otherwise there is a danger of the state being held to ransom, one property at a time, as per the Stephen Donnelly example. Where the state is forced to bid at high prices against commercial and international investors, just to maintain an existing public facility.

Peregrinus

recedite wrote: »

I think the state should pay something to buy the deeds of all publicly funded schools and hospitals. But the price can be minimised by a combination of different strategies. By offsetting some properties against outstanding redress payments. By refusing to continue to pay teacher salaries in the schools that held out for a high price. By refusing to sink any more public money into renovations, extensions, and extra facilities for any privately owned schools and hospitals.
Use whatever legal means possible to prevent publicly funded facilities being scrapped by private owners, whether by CPO, or a law to prevent them ever being sold, or a public policy never to give alternative planning permission. Any of these would devalue the properties.

As a comparison, there was a guy who bought up a park, Dartmouth Square in Dublin, a property that would have been worth many millions as a development site. But in the end, he found he could do nothing with it except sell it into public ownership for a modest sum.

Otherwise there is a danger of the state being held to ransom, one property at a time, as per the Stephen Donnelly example. Where the state is forced to bid at high prices against commercial and international investors, just to maintain an existing public facility.

You're overlooking a point already made by Absolam, Rec. If the opening position is that the state is no longer going to fund religiously-owned institutions to provide public services, then the schools, hospitals, etc are no longer public institutions or public services. They are privately-owned property in which public services used to be provided, but no longer are.

In some cases - not very many, I suspect - the state will be able to strike a deal whereby the property is transferred in settlement of redress scheme liablities.

In some cases - again, not very many - the religious institutions which own the properties will have alternative uses for them, and they won't be interested in offering them for sale.

In most cases, though, the properties are going to come on the market, and the state will be one possible buyer, in competition with other possible buyers.

How stiff with that competition be? Depends entirely on the property. The state might be the only prospective purchaser for a rural national school at a crossroads half-way between two villages which are 5km apart. But there aren't a lot of such properties, and they don't represent a huge proportion of primary school places.

In other cases, obviously, there'll be hot competition for potentially valuable properties.

Can the state force down the price through restrictive planning decisions, etc? Almost certainly illegal and unconstitutional; highly likely to be a breach of EU competition law; good case for saying that it's an infringement of the European Convention on Human Rights. Basically, using planning codes and the like to devalue property with the express purpose of allowing you to acquire it for less than its intrinsic worth is an oppressive use of state power for an improper purpose. It doesn't matter whether the owner of the property is a religious body or not.

Having said that, even without any such shenanigans, it's obvious that in this scenario there's be a vast amount of redundant institutional property coming onto the market at the same time. Even allowing for the fact that much of it has value arising out of other potential uses, such a vast oversupply must result in a drop in prices. And at the same time the state has, let's suppose, a bunch of money reluctantly paid over by Apple. Leave aside for the moment the feelings of property owners and property developers and banks at the consequences for them of the drop in property values; there is undoubtedly an opportunity for the state, with a large pot of ready cash, to pick up a lot of property at what would look like bargain prices.

But, bargain prices or not, it still adds up to quite a large transfer of cash from the state to the church. There's no point advocating this policy and denying that this would be the outcome; people will think you are either a fool or a liar. If you're going to advocate for this policy, you'll have to persuade that paying all this money to the church is worth doing in order to secure some socially beneficial outcome, and that it's an outcome which couldn't be secured at a lesser cost by other means.

Absolam

recedite wrote: »

I think the state should pay something to buy the deeds of all publicly funded schools and hospitals. But the price can be minimised by a combination of different strategies. By offsetting some properties against outstanding redress payments. By refusing to continue to pay teacher salaries in the schools that held out for a high price. By refusing to sink any more public money into renovations, extensions, and extra facilities for any privately owned schools and hospitals.
Use whatever legal means possible to prevent publicly funded facilities being scrapped by private owners, whether by CPO, or a law to prevent them ever being sold, or a public policy never to give alternative planning permission. Any of these would devalue the properties.

Why? The State doesn't need to own those facilities, does it? In fact, by not having capital sunk into all that property, the State has more money to spend on providing services instead... like schools, and hospitals. Particularly when your strategies for 'minimizing' the price range from the wildly speculative (just how many schools and hospitals are owned by religious orders who actually owe money to redress schemes? And where will the money for redress come from if its being spent on acquiring property instead?) to the downright illegal; bullying institutions by withdrawing funding to compel them to sell off their property. It all sounds rather more like an expensive ego trip by anti-theists than a sensible course of action for a State.

recedite wrote: »

As a comparison, there was a guy who bought up a park, Dartmouth Square in Dublin, a property that would have been worth many millions as a development site. But in the end, he found he could do nothing with it except sell it into public ownership for a modest sum.

How is it a comparison? There's no evidence the State withdrew the funding they committed to him for use of the property, or that they prevented him selling it to anyone else, is there? And wasn't it sold off because the company that owned it went into liquidation, rather than the State bullied him into selling it cheap?

recedite wrote: »

Otherwise there is a danger of the state being held to ransom, one property at a time, as per the Stephen Donnelly example. Where the state is forced to bid at high prices against commercial and international investors, just to maintain an existing public facility.

So... in that example, how exactly was the State held to ransom? The nuns sold the convent and it's adjoining land; there was no mention whatsover of selling the school, was there? The State had an opportunity to extend the grounds of the school, and it was only "due to initial resistance" from the State that the property went to auction at all.

Of course, someone might be so prejudiced as to leap to the conclusion that the nuns were selling the school as part of the convent, and simply present it as a fact that the State was being held to ransom, without checking the actual facts. Such a check would obviously show that the property for auction is shown here, delineated by a red line. The National school is the squarish building to the right of the property, outside of the red line. It's the property on the left of this view, distinct from the one that was auctioned directly ahead; which looks like a convent, as it is described on Stephen Donnellys page. Here's an aerial view where you can see both.

It seems to me you've done the Holy Faith Nuns something of a disservice with your unfounded accusation that they threatened to close a school and sell it, and to TD Donnelly with your amazement that he apparently thinks he has "done the state some service" by acting as a facilitator in this. €226 per square meter is a bit of a bargain in Greystones I'd say.

magicbastarder

slightly more dramatic, but no less possible than the state buying all religiously owned land in one go; what would happen, if the church in a fit of pique or whatever, decided to put all the land they own on the market? they can choose who to sell it to, so could approach a vulture fund, and close all schools and hospitals they own.
are there any legal brakes on this sort of thing? or would be be a case of emergency legislation in the public interest?

Peregrinus

As regards the hospitals, the owners almost certainly have contracts with the state which require them to operate a hospital, so they'd expose themselves to all kinds of breach of contract claims if they just stopped. The prospect of the legal sh!tstorm that would ensue would probably discourage all but the most adventurous vulture funds from bidding for the property, which would in turn depress the price the property might hope to fetch.

But religious bodies could certainly get out of the hospital-running business in a slower and more orderly fashion, if they wished to. Some have already done so. You could put the hospital on the market as a going concern (probably only practicable for private hospitals) or you could negotiate the termination of your contract to operate a public hospital (and those negotiations might well include a deal by which the State bought the property so that it could continue to run the hospital there).

(FWIW, I'm aware of cases in which religious bodies have sold hospitals as going concerns, and the sale documents have included covenants to the effect that the hospital services provided by the purchaser will be conducted according to stated ethical precepts (e.g. no termination of pregnancies). You can't compel a purchaser to accept that (or any other) condition, but you can refuse to conclude a deal with him if he won't. In practice, covenants like this are probably very difficult to enforce after the sale has gone through.)

As regards primary schools, I'm not sure that there is a contract with a church body to operate a school. The school is operated by the board of management, which includes church representatives but isn't itself a church body. The school premises usually belongs to a diocesan trust, and it's provided to the board of management to conduct the school for, typically, no rent. The state, of course, pays the running costs of the school, including the maintenance of the property, but they don't pay any rent. They also pay a signficant part, or the whole, of any capital works on the property - erection or extension of the school building.

I think the deal is that if the school ceases to be conducted on the premises - at any rate, if it ceases to be conducted on the premises because the owner turfs it out - then all those capital grants become repayable. So if the church were to evict all the schools conducted in premises owned by diocesan trusts, it would have to pay a huge amount of money to the State. And that's probably an effective control to prevent the church from doing that.

With secondary schools, the position is more complicated and more diverse, and there are a number of different management models. In the old days, a secondary school was typically owned and run by a religious order, and some still are. If it's in the free school scheme, the state pays all of the running and maintenance costs; if it's a fee-paying school, the state pays part. Either way, in principal the order can close the school at any time. The school might or might not have received grant money which would be repayable in that event, but I think that would be a much smaller factor than for the primary schools.

Now, the position is similar, except that many of the schools are now owned and run by educational charities. They stand in the same relationship to the state as the religious orders used to - i.e. the own the buildings and conduct the schools - but, as charities, they are potentially subject to court supervision and control in how they conduct their affairs, and they have to use their assets for the purposes of the charity.

So, if their charitable purpose is "to conduct schools in accordance with the educational and spiritual principles espoused by the blessed foundress of the Armalite Sisters", and they conclude that new Dept of Education regulations requiring compulsory mixed bathing and a permissive attitude to chewing gum and costume jewelry make this impossible, they can close the school. The Attorney General can haul them into the High Court and argue that this is not a proper attempt to carry out the terms of the charitable trust, but on the (rather fanciful) facts given, I don't think she'll succeed. But if they all close their schools as part of a co-ordinated campaign to, I don't know, sell off the assets and apply the sale proceeds to erecting a really big cathedral or financing the opposition to a "repeal the eighth" referendum, the High Court (on application by the A-G) would step in and say no, that's not a proper application of trust assets. Most probably the Court would remove the trustees and appoint others who were willing to carry out the trust in accordance with its terms.