The Catholic Church should not have to "cough up another half a billion euro", Bertie Ahern insisted as he defended the indemnity deal done with religious congregations to compensate people who were abused in State-run institutions.
The Taoiseach told Labour leader Pat Rabbitte that the church did not have the extra funds and "I make no apology to this House or to anyone else" about the way the deal was done. "I do not believe for a second that we should have taken any more money from the religious institutions in the State. That is my position."
Mr Rabbitte said the deal done with the religious congregations capped their contribution at €127 million yet the bill for compensation had reached €1.3 billion. The Department of Finance had recommended a 50:50 split between the church congregations and the State, but the Government ratified the deal "in a most unusual way".
It was done "without a memorandum to Cabinet, based on a verbal presentation by a Minister who was to leave office the following day, excluding the usual professional advice from the Attorney General's office and without sight of the agreement".
Mr Rabbitte said that, in September 2003, he had questioned whether the figures from the Comptroller & Auditor General, which estimated compensation costs at between €869 million to €1.04 billion, were correct. He said that Mr Ahern had repeated a number of times that the cost would not be anything like the estimates, yet the C&AG's office now estimated the cost at €1.327 billion.
He called on the Taoiseach to admit that the deal was a "disaster" for the taxpayer.
Mr Ahern said, however, that the Department of Education's estimate at the time was for €610 million and he said that "nobody could have predicted with certainty how many applications there would be".
The Taoiseach said to Mr Rabbitte that "yes, that taxpayers will pay for it as they did for Army deafness and other issues. Let us be honest about the point at which we differ on this matter. You believe I should have taken the money from the church, but I do not. I do not believe the church should have coughed up another €500 million."
Mr Ahern said that the State "made an apology and said that we would give substantial payments to those individuals, many of whose lives were wrecked".
The Labour leader said everybody believed those who were abused should be compensated. The Department of Education's original assessment had been €250 million, not €651 million, yet the Taoiseach had ended up paying €1,200 million out of taxpayers' money.
