Issues set out by Ms Justice Laffoy suggest Government incompetence on an extraordinary scale, writes Mark Brennock, Chief Political Correspondent.
The series of Government actions and omissions set out by the judge suggests Government incompetence on an extraordinary scale. Government actions "stymied" the Laffoy Commission, rendered it "powerless" and its mandate, enshrined in law, "inoperable", she says.
While the Oireachtas gave the commission a legal obligation to carry out a particular function, the Government has now told it that it is likely to be given a substantially different mandate - of a nature and on a date yet to be determined.
The Government's response to the judge's letter, which is likely but not certain to be delivered after tomorrow's Cabinet meeting, will have to explain why, some four years after it was first established on an administrative basis, the child abuse commission has broken down having made barely a start to its work and with no idea as to what will happen next.
The Government actions that led to this were not those of an accident-prone Minister for Education on a "solo run", as some have suggested. The key decisions that have neutered the commission were taken by the Cabinet, chaired by the Taoiseach and with the advice of the Attorney General.
It's not as if the Cabinet was unaware of the political imperative to handle the scandal of child abuse properly. Bertie Ahern was a Cabinet minister and Noel Dempsey chief whip when the Fianna Fáil/Labour Coalition collapsed in 1994 over the handling of a child abuse controversy. They have been down a similar road before.
Nevertheless, the judge charged with investigating the issue could claim this week that, "since its establishment, the commission has never been properly enabled by the Government to fulfil satisfactorily the functions conferred on it by the Oireachtas".
She cited a number of factors. Some can be blamed partly on the Department, and therefore Ministers, of Education. Close to two years of delay resulted from the negotiations between the Department and a hardball legal team hired by the religious orders over how much they would pay towards compensating abuse victims. Whether the Department should have allowed these talks to hold up the investigation for so long only to emerge with what is widely seen as a bad deal for the State is debatable.
But the key decisions that have, as the judge puts it, rendered the commission "powerless" were made by the Cabinet.
The Government legislation setting up the commission specifically mandated it to inquire into each allegation of abuse made to it. Yet the Government tells us it is this fact that has caused the present crisis.
The Taoiseach and the Minister for Education have now told us they were surprised that the commission was faced with having to hold "trials" of some 1,700 complaints of abuse, with most being defended vigorously by lawyers on behalf of those accused.
The Government response - most likely this week - will have to tell us how they could possibly have been surprised. By the time the Laffoy Commission was set up, the Government was aware that close to 1,000 people had taken or were preparing to take court action alleging abuse. In addition, the Department of Education had received substantial numbers of Freedom of Information requests from other former residents of religious-run institutions, many of whom could have been expected to make complaints. The fact that some 1,700 people complained to Laffoy, therefore, seems entirely unsurprising.
Or was the surprise that those against whom abuse allegations were made chose to defend themselves vigorously rather than walk in with frank confessions? The religious institutions' tough approach to the negotiations over the compensation fund surely gave a preview of what to expect when individual allegations of abuse were being investigated.
Indeed, in circumstances where some complaints could indeed be unfounded, and those accused have a constitutional right to vindication of their good name, was the robust legalistic response of the accused surprising? Did the religious lead the Government to believe there would not be such a response? Who gave any such assurance and who accepted it?
Even if the Government was initially surprised by the emergence of 1,700 cases to be dealt with legalistically, its response has been incredibly slow. The judge's letter reveals that, in June 2002, the commission sought extra resources to cope with the volume of complaints. The Department of Education first asked the commission to justify this request and, six months later, the Government agreed in principle to grant these resources.
But they were withheld, pending the outcome of the review of the commission's work. This began last December and was to take two months. However, it took seven months for the Government to tell the commission that the review was complete, that Mr Dempsey had come up with proposals to deal with the problem, but that these had been rejected by Cabinet and another review was to begin. The resources are still awaited.
In ordering the second review, the Government has made it clear that the commission will, at some stage, be given a quite different mandate than its current one. The judge says there is now a risk - albeit slight - that others in the commission may have to be replaced, as they may have come across information or formed impressions while implementing their current mandate that would hamper their ability to carry out a new mandate with an open mind.
A problem shared is a problem halved, and for Minister for Education, Mr Dempsey, the publication of Ms Justice Laffoy's devastating letter of resignation has shown that it is the Government, and not just him, which has a serious case to answer.
So while the Government was told in June 2002 by the Commission of the high workload and the need for extra resources, legislation to resolve the matter may not be enacted until close to two years later.
The Cabinet meets tomorrow to discuss its response to the crisis. The Government says its response will look forward rather than look back, as well it might. Ministers hope to be able to explain how they plan to proceed from here on.
Meanwhile the victims, and those accused, must wait and wait to see if the Government's account suggests that anyone at all is responsible for how, after four years, we appear to have got back to the beginning again.