The Government was described as unfit for office and urged to resign in the Dáil today as the fallout from the Laffoy Commission crisis rumbled on.
Following yesterday's revelation that the inquiry into child abuse could cost as much as €1 billion, confusion emerged today over the Attorney General's input into the deal that saw the Church's contribution to the compensation fund capped at €128 million.
The Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, who was the AG at the time the financial redress scheme was agreed by then minister for education, Dr Michael Woods, said he was not consulted at key times over the deal.
But the Taoiseach appeared to contradict him the Dáil when he said minister had been kept informed and "involved throughout the entire period". However, he conceded that the AG's office had been excluded from two important meetings.
Labour Party leader, Mr Pat Rabbitte, said the Government handled the redress issue in "an entirely reckless and profligate manner". "The deal will now come back to haunt the taxpayer," he added.
He said the victims of abuse were left at the centre of a political storm caused by a litany of "betrayals, broken promises, untruths, missed opportunities and incompetent actions of this Government".
He said if the Government had "any sense of honour left" it should resign.
Fine Gael leader, Mr Enda Kenny, said the Government had put "expediency" before the interests of the abused who deserved better treatment for the "sadistic" way they were treated as children.
He said the crisis precipitated by Ms Justice Laffoy's resignation was not about money.
"It beggars belief that a Government which is recklessly, ruinously, losing us billions, is, just like that, seized by at attack of fiscal rectitude," Mr Kenny said.
"If we can afford Flood and Moriarty, then we can sure as hell find a way to give people broken by this State the voice we took from them, the hearing we denied them, the comfort and compassion we refused them," he added.
He said the Government was "shameless, gutless, leaderless, directionless, and now with Laffoy, soulless". It was "unworthy of office", he said.
The matter will come before the Public Accounts Committee tomorrow.