Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)

That is the Department policy. My point relates to the scale of the deal. Will the Minister agree that the Department of Finance recommended to his predecessor, Deputy Woods, that the religious orders should, in principle, bear approximately half of the cost of the restitution? That information is in the public domain. What is now emerging is that they will bear less than 20% of the real cost, if it is €1.1 billion, and, as the Minister rightly said, we cannot sign off on that figure. Irrespective of what the Supreme Court judgment may be, is it not time to revisit the whole compensation deal in the light of the unprecedented scale of the cost of the scheme, which we failed to anticipate at the time?

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