Cabinet as a whole must carry can

Responsibility for the debacle that the Laffoy Commission ended up as, stretches well beyond the responsibility of just Minister for Education Noel Dempsey and rests with the entire Cabinet.

It was their collective responsibility which denied the Commission the resources to fulfil its remit and prevented it from effectively carrying out the functions conferred on it, significantly, by the Oireachtas.

Because of a duplicitous attitude to the Commission, the Cabinet, at its meeting today, has no alternative but to accept totally that it, and it alone, carries the grave onus for its collapse.

Any demand for possible resignations should not exclude Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, because he led the previous Government which gave its imprimatur to the Church/State package, which limited the liability of religious orders while tying the taxpayer into unfathomed financial consequences.

It was, by any measure, an extraordinary deal born out of political expediency and sealed on the eve of last year’s general election when the Oireachtas had no opportunity to scrutinise it.

The man who concluded it, former Education Minister Michael Woods, is no longer a member of the Government but Bertie Ahern is and most definitely culpable for such an inept and flawed agreement.

It concluded that the religious orders, some of whose members were guilty of child sexual abuse, would have their liability capped at €127 million, and the taxpayers would bear all other financial responsibilities. The State does bear a large measure of blame because it caused unfortunate children to be placed under the care of religious orders in homes where they were sexually abused.

But the liability of those religious orders was restricted to an extraordinary degree and does not reflect the extent to which natural justice would demand they acknowledge their responsibility.

What is essential to this aspect of the current controversy is that the Cabinet re-visit the terms of that agreement and set in train whatever it takes to make it more equitable, even if that has to mean a referendum.

At least two Oireachtas committees will address the circumstances of the Laffoy resignation but one of them, the Public Accounts Committee, will also consider the deal which caused the State to arrive at a ludicrously prejudicial agreement to the taxpayers. The Oireachtas Committee on Education will also discuss the Laffoy controversy but is hardly likely to do anything before the Government makes its official response.