Catholic Church reports £7.2m rise in money collected in Dublin archdiocese

Money collected for the Catholic Church in the Dublin archdiocese during the year to June 1999 was £35.92 million, a £7.2 million increase on the previous year's £28.71 million.

More than £9.4 million was collected for the support of priests, an increase of £0.4 million on the 1997/98 figure, and £8 million was collected in family offerings (up £0.3); sales of assets was £6.79 million (up from £1 million). The £3.28 million collected through donations etc was up from £3.1 million, while draws, sales of work, etc raised £2 million (up from £1.8 million).

Expenditure was slightly down. The archdiocese spent £28.561 million in the year ending June 1999, down from £28.564 million in the previous year. The largest expenditure was on the remuneration of priests and parish employees. That cost £11.525 million in the year ending June of last year, an increase of £159,000 on the previous year.

Building projects cost just over £4 million, down from £5.44 million the previous year, while local contributions to primary schools, at £1.03 million, were down on the previous year's £1.48 million.

The archdiocese was £10.471 million in the black at the end of June last year, compared to a £3.107 million for June 1998.

A statement on the finances showed that collections for the support of priests and family offerings were up by 3 per cent, while the SHARE collection, the diocese development fund, was "up by 2 per cent when adjustment is made for the fact that there were three collections less held for SHARE in 1998/1999 than in 1997/1998."

The diocesan finance director Mgr John Wilson, said that over the next five years, £7.5 million would have to be spent on capital expenditure in the archdiocese.

"Building costs have risen sharply in the last few years and we find ourselves faced with very significant costs. There will be need for extensive fundraising at parish level and increased contributions to SHARE," he said.

It was also pointed out that support from the archdiocese for a variety of pastoral services "comes to over £1 million".

The Dublin archdiocese has a population of 1,033,808 Catholics out of a total of 1,164,256 people, in an area which includes the city and county of Dublin, nearly all Co Wicklow, and parts of Kildare, Carlow, Wexford, and Laois.