The victims of abuse in residential institutions will have expected yesterday's document from the Government to include certain proposals that could have been speedily implemented, so that some of the work the Laffoy Commission was mandated to do could proceed.
These could have been combined with other proposals to deal with some of the more complex problems identified both by Ms Justice Mary Laffoy and by the Government itself.
Alternatively, the Government could have decided on a radical solution that would abandon some of the more intractable aspects of the whole inquiry process, and advance immediate, if limited, measures to produce an authoritative report on what happened and proposals to ensure no such abuse ever happens again.
Neither course was adopted. Instead yesterday's document rehashed proposals that have been hanging about since last February, and promised legislation at some future date that cannot be before the middle of next year. This will then have to go through the Oireachtas. By the time the commission, under a new chairperson, is working under the new mandate, a year will have passed and more potential witnesses are likely to be dead.
This assumes it all goes smoothly. But there are pitfalls. The document promises a "transitional mechanism" to ensure that the evidence already gathered can be used by a commission working with a new mandate. Undoubtedly the best legal brains at the disposal of the Government will design such a mechanism, but that is no guarantee it will be immune to legal challenge.
It also promises yet another review process, in addition to the two already undertaken. This will concentrate on best practice in the organisation and working of the commission from "an independent and objective source". This will, at the least, involve yet more expense, and carries the implication that there has been something wrong with the workings of the commission so far. The implication will do nothing to repair relations between the Government and the commission, and will not make the task of finding a new chairperson any easier.
The Government also said the new legislation will "have regard to" whatever issues emerge from the Christian Brothers constitutional case. This concerned the impact of the passage of time on the rights of those accused, and whether dead people could be named by the commission as abusers.
It has never been explicitly stated, but there seems to be an unexpressed hope in official circles that in this case the courts will rule against the commission, and find the legislation introduced by the Government and enacted by the Oireachtas to be unconstitutional. At the very least the Government seems to be expecting some areas of the present inquiry by the commission to be excluded. That would effectively remove responsibility from the Coalition for drawing up much of the new legislation.
All in all, what we received yesterday was little more than a plea for more time.