Taoiseach defends redress deal for abused

The Government did not need legal experts, the Attorney General or papers to decide on the State's contribution to compensate victims of abuse in religious institutions, the Taoiseach insisted in the Dáil.

In a renewed row with the Labour Party leader, Mr Pat Rabbitte, about the basis on which the religious institutions' liability was capped at €128 million, Mr Ahern said: "These people were abused in institutions, many of them State institutions. They deserve redress. We made political decisions. They were policy decisions. We were right to do that."

During increasingly hostile exchanges, Mr Ahern said he did not want to repeat what he had said on Tuesday in the Dáil but "the more I watch this argument, the more I realise what irks Deputy Rabbitte".

When the Labour leader raised the issue on Tuesday, Mr Ahern accused him of "trying to jump off a few religious organisations and make them bankrupt and that is what Deputy Rabbitte is really about". Mr Rabbitte later demanded that the Taoiseach withdraw his "outrageous and baseless allegation".

In yesterday's row, Mr Rabbitte claimed that the then minister, Dr Michael Woods, who did the deal with the religious institutions, "apparently made his decision that the State was liable because of television programmes and other media reports". He said the Taoiseach and Dr Woods "having excluded the Office of the Attorney General, proceeded without a memorandum to Government on the last day the Government was in office and made the decision on the basis of an oral presentation, breach of Cabinet procedures".

Mr Rabbitte repeatedly demanded to know if any papers existed to show "on what basis the Taoiseach decided that the Irish taxpayer would pick up virtually the entire bill for this disastrous neglect of the past". He said that Ms Justice Laffoy's resignation was forced because of the lack of co-operation from the Department of Education when she sought those papers.

"What is the answer to Ms Justice Laffoy's question?" he asked. "Are there papers that show why the Government reached this decision? If such papers exist, will the Taoiseach hand them over? What is difficult about this question? There either are, or are not, papers."

Mr Ahern said the Government had decided "not to take a legal view. We thought more of the individuals. If I was to follow the legal advice or the advice of the Department of Finance, we would have had to fight each one of those cases through the courts."

Mr Rabbitte: "That is not true."

Mr Ahern: "Many of these institutions covered by the redress scheme were run by the State, so the State was 100 per cent liable in those cases."