Fintan O'Toole: What it comes down to is this. For the religious orders who perpetrated and permitted the most sickening abuse of children in their care, the amount of public money available to bail them out is limitless. For those who were abused, on the other hand, public money is a precious commodity.
In return for a pittance - in real terms, probably no more than €60 million - the Government has indemnified the orders against all legal liability for the actions of their members. It has done so without knowing the final cost of this extraordinary gesture. Money is no object - however much it takes, we will pay. Only when it comes to the victims, however, do the concepts of scrutiny, accountability and the best use of public funds come into play.
Behind the debacle of the collapse of the Laffoy Commission lies this grotesque double standard. And the question we have to ask now is what, in turn, lies behind the application of two completely different criteria: a soft and generous one for the orders and a hard and cruel one for the victims? The Government has contrived to ensure both that the institutional church is protected from the consequences of its crimes and that the inquiry established by law to investigate those crimes has been, as Ms Justice Laffoy puts it, "stymied".
The last time we had a political crisis prompted by the State's handling of child abuse by an agent of the Catholic Church - the Brendan Smyth case of 1994 - the Fianna Fáil ministers then in power ended up embracing the charge of incompetence. It was the lesser of two evils, the alternative being deliberate collusion in allowing the church to keep its darkest secrets under wraps. It's a safe bet that by the time this current crisis reaches its conclusion, the Government will be making a similar plea: we screwed up but not deliberately.
In the unattributable briefings, of course, that "we" will be changed to "Michael Woods". A dead man is usually responsible, and the former minister for education who did the deal with CORI and set up the Laffoy Commission has the inestimable value of being already politically dead.
Given the crowd we're dealing with, incompetence is not a far-fetched explanation. But the weight of evidence suggests that something far more sinister has happened.
Michael Woods did not act alone. His deal with the orders got full Cabinet approval. And the obstruction and eventual destruction of the Laffoy Commission has not been a sudden, thoughtless act. As the judge herself has made clear in her precise and carefully phrased resignation letter, it has been a long-term process, an accumulation of individual events. Altogether, this whole thing has the look far more of design than accident.
If this is so, then we are looking at events of enormous import for the future of this island, a resurgence of Rome Rule. The public interest - in this case the protection of public money and the vindication of grossly abused citizens - has been subordinated to the narrow institutional interests of the church. (I stress the word "institutional"; it is by no means in the interests of the vast majority of Irish Catholics that the necessary spiritual cleansing of their church should be stymied.)
The Government's apparently deliberate betrayal of the victims of abuse also has profound consequences for what happens next. The obvious solution - an apology to Ms Justice Laffoy from the Taoiseach, a commitment to give her the proper resources to do the job quickly and a request that she stay on - is not really available. It would require a belief that the Government is dealing with this issue in good faith, and that belief stretches far beyond the breaking-point of credulity. A much more radical reappraisal is necessary.
First, both the State's deal with the CORI and the current redress board for compensating victims should be scrapped. The whole notion of justice for the victims has been corrupted by the State's assumption of responsibility for crimes it did not commit and by the very real prospect that the redress board will pay out more in fees to lawyers than in compensation to victims.
The State should pay every survivor of an industrial school a token but significant amount - say €100,000 - in recognition of the basic injustice of consigning children to institutional slavery. Given that about 3,100 survivors are known to the Laffoy Commission, this would cost around €300 million. But the money would at least go to the victims rather than to lawyers, and the cost would still be cheaper, and more containable, than the current CORI deal. Thereafter, victims could sue the orders for specific abuse.
Second, while the confidential strand of the current commission, where those who do not want to come out in public can tell their stories, should continue; the investigation of the history of institutional abuse must now become a public tribunal of inquiry, ideally under Ms Justice Laffoy, and preferably with facilities for the broadcast of its proceedings.