The Government would find itself facing significant legal difficulties if it agreed to a once-off payment to compensate victims of sexual abuse, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said yesterday.
He said the Government was advised it could not, for legal reasons, offer the package - thought to be in the region of €5 million - which would compensate 13 female victims of paedophile swimming coach Derry O'Rourke.
Mr Ahern was defending the Government decision to turn down the package, which was requested by Swim Ireland. There is now a growing doubt over the future of the swimming organisation with the 13 cases about to proceed to hearing in the High Court.
The Taoiseach yesterday said the Government had examined the issue in depth.
"Back in the early winter, we set up an inter-departmental group to examine all aspects of that. It concluded its work just at the beginning of the year a few weeks ago," said Mr Ahern.
"The advice to the Government was that the State had absolutely no liability in these cases and it would open up a significant precedent and legal difficulties if the State were to contribute towards the costs in these cases. The advice to the Government was that we cannot do that for those legal reasons."
He accepted it created a huge difficulty for Swim Ireland, which may now face insolvency, or even disbandment. It recently received €640,00 in funding from the Sports Council for the summer. Sources close to Swim Ireland stressed that the suffering of the victims remained uppermost.
The sources also said that Swim Ireland now faced immense problems arising out of the Government decision.