Opposition parties have demanded that the Taoiseach and his Government take responsibility for the crisis in the child abuse inquiry and that control of it be removed from the Department of Education.
The Fine Gael leader, Mr Enda Kenny, said yesterday the Government's actions had bordered on negligence. He accused it of paying "lip service" to the issue of child abuse and failing to deliver on the commitments it made.
The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, had chaired the Cabinet meetings which made the decisions complained of by Ms Justice Laffoy, and he must therefore acknowledge his and the Government's responsibility for the commission's breakdown.
"The Taoiseach is the head of a Government that rendered the commission powerless through a series of actions, decisions and protracted reviews. The same Taoiseach must now come forward and address fully the issues raised by Justice Laffoy's letter and move swiftly to restore some confidence in the process."
The contents of the judge's resignation letter "presents a damning indictment of the Government's competence and management of the Laffoy Commission from its outset", Mr Kenny said.
The Labour Party leader, Mr Pat Rabbitte, said the letter makes it clear it was the actions of the Government as a whole that "have undermined the independence of the Laffoy Commission to the point where Justice Laffoy found her position untenable".
He said in a statement that it was clear from the resignation letter "that the commitment of the Government to the apology issued by the Taoiseach to victims of abuse was hollow in the extreme".
The sequence of events outlined by the judge showed that "the Taoiseach's pretence" to have been taken by surprise by the number of claims and by the issue of costs was "equally disingenuous. We now know that Judge Laffoy raised the issue of legal costs with the Government in 2000, and that she made detailed proposals to Government last year to enable the commission to work in four divisions to complete its investigations within three years".
However, instead of providing the resources required, the Government had decided to review the commission's mandate, and nine months later no action had been taken.
The Government had begun "a campaign of pretending that if the commission was left to its own devices, its work would take up to 11 years to complete".
The Government's hypocrisy on the issue "knows no bounds".
The Green Party leader, Mr Trevor Sargent, called on the Taoiseach to take managerial control of the inquiry away from the Department of Education and to recall the Dáil to consider Ms Justice Laffoy's resignation.
"The Department of Education is wholly compromised in the light of certain evidence from victims of abuse which allegedly took place in institutions controlled by the same Department," he said. "I call on the Taoiseach to waste no further time or taxpayers' money and consult fully with the victims through their representative organisations to re-establish an effective commission, hopefully with Justice Laffoy at its head."