I am sure the Taoiseach will agree that the compliant Irish taxpayer is a very fair person. He and she were prepared to fund the services of the State when their betters had Ansbacher deposits, DIRT accounts, deals with the banks and so on and so forth. The taxpayer wants to see a fair deal for victims of abuse in residential institutions. The taxpayer wants the State to pay its share for its disgraceful neglect in invigilating these institutions, but the taxpayer also wants to see that the primary wrongdoers, those who were in the front line in these institutions, pay their fair share. It was on that point that Ms Justice Laffoy, whose resignation was forced by obstruction and lack of co-operation from the relevant Department and Minister, sought discovery of papers to know on what basis the Taoiseach decided that the Irish taxpayer would pick up virtually the entire bill for this disastrous neglect of the past. On what basis did he decide to cap the liability of the religious institutions at €128 million? That is the information that Ms Justice Laffoy wants to know. On what basis was the decision made and where are those papers?

I draw the Taoiseach's attention to the reply by the Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Noel Dempsey, last night. When asked this question, he said:

I surmise that Deputy Woods based hisopinion that the State was liable on the information that we all had and knew through the television programmes and from various victims' groups and individuals that made contact with us.

Deputy Woods apparently made his decision that the State was liable because of television programmes and other media reports.

I ask the Taoiseach one simple question and I do not want any of his rambling down memory lane and his apology and his baseless allegations about me wanting to bankrupt religious organisations. He should leave all that out. Are there any extant papers on which his Government based its decision? Do any papers exist, and if they do, will he hand them over to the commission which has replaced that of Ms Justice Laffoy?

Deputy Rabbitte obviously never likes my answers on this issue. He now wants me to forget all the reasons we did it. I will decide on my reply; Deputy Rabbitte can decide on his contribution.

Hear, hear.

A few thousand cases had to be dealt with and we had to look at what process would function best in the shortest possible time. Legally, liability in each individual case could be divided into four categories and this is what faced the then Minister, Deputy Woods: the individual perpetrators of the abuse, the managers of the institutions, the religious orders who controlled the institutions and the State which put the children into care but failed to ensure that the care was of a sufficient standard. There are thousands of individual cases of abuse and the precise split of liability between the religious and the State would be different——

The Taoiseach is not answering the question.

——in each case. The only way to test it would be to try every case in court.

What is the simple answer to the question? Are there any papers?

Deputy Rabbitte will have an opportunity for a supplementary.

He should keep his arrogance for RTE.

The Taoiseach without interruption, please.

That the State believed it was not 100% liable in the legal sense is reflected in the fact that the State negotiated with the religious orders and got a contribution of €128 million after long negotiations. The estimates available to the then Minister, Deputy Woods, gave rise to calculations of compensation of the order of €508 million. This works out about a 75:25 split. The only international evidence available came from Canada where the redress was of that level.

The alternative which was open to the Government was to take each of these cases through the courts and cross-examine the witnesses and the various organisations to which I referred, be they religious institutions, professional staff or whatever. I do not want to continue arguing with Deputy Rabbitte but the reason the decision was made was that we thought it would not be fair to put the victims through the trauma of court cases. We asked if it was fair to put these people through court cases. Some of them were out of the country and some were shown on the RTE television programme in Christmas week. In most cases the reason they ended up in these institutions is that the State put them there. The State did not hit them or kick them or do all the terrible things we saw in the television programmes, but by and large the State put them there. It would have taken years to bring these cases through the courts to establish 100% liability against the institutions.

That was not the question.

I am not going to concede on this point. Deputy Rabbitte is wrong. I am right and I am not changing on this.

It is a cover up.

We did not put the people through it. We made a political policy decision and felt that the right thing to do was to come to a settlement, make the churches pay a certain contribution and have the State indemnify the rest. Having done this, we could then process these cases. We did this with Ms Justice Laffoy and we will do it with Mr. Justice Ryan. We are right in doing this. I stand over it and will stand over it every day in this House, if necessary.

If I am wrong, then Ms Justice Laffoy is wrong. Ms Justice Laffoy raised the same issue. Nobody asserted that a 100% liability should be levied on the religious institutions concerned. I did not assert this, nor did Ms Justice Laffoy. The Department of Finance suggested a 50:50 split. However, one eighth has been levied on the institutions and seven eighths on the taxpayer.

The Deputy does not know that.

What is the answer to Ms Justice Laffoy's question? Are there papers that show why the Government reached this decision? If such papers exist, will the Taoiseach hand them over? What is difficult about this question? There either are, or are not, papers. The Taoiseach and the then Minister, Deputy Woods, without the advice of the Attorney General, and having excluded the Office of the Attorney General and its legal experts, proceeded without a memorandum to Government and went to Government on the last day it was in office——

The Deputy should tell the truth.

——and made the decision on the basis of an oral presentation, in breach of Cabinet procedures. Ms Justice Laffoy, who has been forced out, now wants to know on what basis this decision was made. Are there papers and if there are, will the Taoiseach hand them over? The Government has wasted enough taxpayers' money, some €157 million has been wasted at Abbotstown and €40 million has been wasted on electronic voting. Where are the papers?

It was done with a nod and a wink.

The answer to the Deputy's question, if he is interested in it——

I am interested.

The Government decided not to take a legal view——

Are there papers?

Nothing will have been written down.

Please allow the Taoiseach to continue without interruption.

They ask the questions but never listen to the answers.

We have to listen hard to get the answers.

We thought more of the individuals. If I was to follow the legal advice or the advice of the Department of Finance, and justfollow the bureaucratic view, I would have fought each one of those cases through the courts and won or not won. There was plenty of legal advice.

That is not true.

The Taoiseach is misleading the House.

As far as the papers are concerned——

Deputy McManus, aspiring leaders of the Labour Party are not entitled to contribute at this time. Deputy Rabbitte is entitled to hear his answer. Please allow the Taoiseach to continue without interruption.

The Speaker of the House of Commons told Mr. Blair to——

The Deputy is in Ireland now.

Many of the institutions covered by the redress scheme were run by the State, so the State was 100% liable in those cases. What were we to do? We did not need papers, the Attorney General or legal experts. I did not need all of those. The State put these people into institutions, many of which were 100% owned by the State. Deputies are now asking why I did not put these people through the courts and cause them further suffering, and why I accepted only €128 million.

While I am not going to repeat what I said yesterday, the more I watch this argument, the more I realise what irks Deputy Rabbitte. I will not go into that.

The Taoiseach should not repeat his scurrilous allegation.

What motivated me was that people were abused in institutions, many of them State institutions, and they deserve redress. We made political policy decisions and were right to do that. We did not just sit down.

The Taoiseach is not answering the question.

The Taoiseach should answer the question.

Let me make one last point. Will the Deputies listen to just one point?

Deputy Gormley, you are not even in the Labour Party, let alone its leader.

He might join us.

We set up a legal mechanism to deal with this issue quickly. I did not do this to get into a prolonged and haranguing argument about what was right or wrong. We set up asystem of redress. Ms Justice Laffoy was obviously upset by what she has seen. I am sure Mr. Justice Ryan will be equally so as he progresses his excellent work. I am sure they will see that what is at issue is the State looking after these people. I make no apology to the country for that.

So the religious have no obligations.